“Ring a ring of geraniums Pocket full of uranium Hi-ro-shi-ma We all fall down.”
The lines have never ceased to haunt me since I came across them, as a child, possibly in some version of the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. I cannot quite figure out how a child growing up in the boondocks of Bihar would chance upon this dark parody of the classic nursery rhyme (which we chanted joyfully, hands linked in circles) save for my home’s eclectic library brimming with books of every genre. The World War, Japan, the atom bomb, the holocaust… would frequently come up in conversations at home with my parents and perhaps in text books, when I was growing up in the early 1960s. Japan was particularly fascinating because it was the ‘land of the rising sun’ and the ladies wore exotic kimonos and there was the beguiling Mount Fuji but it was this twisted verse that stuck in the mind, in a strange subversion of my childlike innocence with an unfathomable atomic dread without quite understanding why playing with geraniums instead of roses, as I did, the children would “all fall down” but not get up giggling.
It also meant an inner compulsion to visit Hiroshima at an age where traveling to Japan was not just as easy as travelling to Jalpaiguri. Eighty years after the mushroom cloud billowed over the city of Hiroshima; 60 years after my earliest realisation, as a child of 10, that possibly 2,50,000 + people were killed when the two atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan, as I stood before the A-Bomb Dome (Peace Memorial Genbaku Dome) structure in Hiroshima in November 2025, an overwhelming sense of foreboding ran through me. Global leaders still toy with the idea of nuclear attacks even as the survivors of the atom bomb, the Hibakusha, continue to perish. The Japan Times has an interesting statistic: the Hibakusha population is rapidly decreasing due to their advanced age. As of March 2025, their registered number dropped below 100,000 with their average age upwards of 86. For an almost-70-year-old, Hiroshima bludgeons the spirit not just with horror but with trepidation of mankind creating circumstances where thethought of such unimaginable destruction is commonplace in geopolitical discourse.
At 10, however, I was too small to appreciate the significance of the zeros (people killed). At 10, I was too little to understand what the holocaust truly meant. At 10, I certainly had no clue about what it was for generations of Japanese to be condemned to afflictions with cancer and leukaemia attacks, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other radiation-driven malignancies. At 10, even when disconcerted by the thought of atom bombs, I was fascinated by the names of their names. Little Boy that was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Bombs developed by the Manhattan Project and delivered with such precision by the aircraft B-29 Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets on Hiroshima and the B-29 Bockscar, piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney, on Nagasaki. At 10, I realised though that something terrible had happened. There is nothing “learned” about the empathy that arose from within.
So, when the visit to Japan did happen on the eve of my 70th birthday, I realised that age had not withered the feeling of sheer horror of what befell the populace. I recalled former US President Barack Obama (incidentally, the first sitting president to visit the A-Bomb site, 71 years after the bombing, speaking at the sprawling Peace Memorial Park in 2016. “The human wisdom of science had created the nuclear bombs but humanity had not yet succeeded in creating the ethical wisdom to abandon nuclear weapons,” he said, underscoring the chasm between technological and moral advancements. That explains why there is no sign to an end to the nuclear race and a dysfunctional nuclear non-proliferation treaty around. Yet hope springs eternal in the “Flame of Peace,” lit on August 1, 1964, promising to burn till the world is rid of nuclear weapons.
The flame is held by hands clasped together and palms spread open to the sky. I learn that the structure was designed by Kenzo Tange and represented a gesture to comfort the victims who “desperately sought water.” It perhaps shows a sense of impotent solidarity with the dead because the twin cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still remain a shared metaphor for suffering; the price mankind pays for imperialism, greed and military action. Never mind that the USA has never quite apologised for its action. It sticks to its story started by Truman: we had to do it to end WWII and save countless lives that would be lost in a prolonged war. Eighty years on, how would it matter if the world’s pre-eminent superpower did say “sorry” (even adding that ‘we had to do it’). Is it because it is afraid of demands that the USA would be called upon to compensate all individuals affected by its actions during World War II or its subsequent nuclear testings elsewhere? There is still some advocacy in Japan for a formal apology though Tokyo has never sought one; 21st geostrategic alliances are more important than historic trauma.
This stance persists into 2025, fuelling quiet resentment in Japan. Yet the holocaust does continue to inspire the sensible to pursue a commitment to peace, disarmament and human dignity; to prick the collective conscience of mankind, to stimulate grassroots movements, dialogue, reconciliation measures and efforts for sustainable peace, even where the United Nations itself has failed to do so. The Peace Memorial Park is teeming with visitors, especially children, who have put up fascinating exhibits in solidarity with the trauma. What about the holocaust’s socio-mental legacy? From my readings, I understand that the Hibakusha suffer from what is described as the “survivors’ guilt.” Apparently the conscience pricks for having lived when so many around them did not. That is only a part of the problem.
The other terrible aspect, though probably not openly expressed, is the stigma of being discriminated against because of radiation fears; an intergenerational anxiety over genetic effects. Many Japanese are still worried about procreation. A National Academies paper talks of 73.5 per cent of the population is at high risk for mood/anxiety disorders decades post-bombing, with symptoms like somatic preoccupation and loss of zest for life. Does Hiroshima as a metaphor for solidarity matter today? Or does it lie confined to the realm of tokenism without any comp ulsor y global mechanisms to halt the dehumanisation in evidence in the many theatres of war? Where is Japan in all this with its foreign policy shifts from the pacifist commitment “proactive pacifism,” undoubtedly under the new geopolitical realities of a rising hegemon, China? Had the metaphor mattered, history may have been prevented from repeating itself, say in the massacres of Gaza. Or does the metaphor matter only to those who have ceased to matter?
As I watch the MotoyasuRiver flowing through Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, gurgling happily by the Atomic Bomb Dome, there is such serenity all around. The pretty three-way Aioi Bridge, spanning the MotoyasuRiver and the Honkawa River, is a must walk-across for the crowds that throng to the park every day. This happy place that has been around since 1932; the tale that it was its distinctive shape and the connectivity that it offered for the military that made it the precise spot for Colonel Paul Tibbets to choose for the fatal delivery, is not readily recounted. Nor does history seem to matter to the surrounding skyscrapers that house the corporates offices; or perhaps it does in some sad, understated way.
The Hiroshima prefecture is the headquarters for the Mazda Motor Corporation, the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Compressor Corporation, is headquartered in Nishi-ku, overlooking the Hiroshima Bay, as is the Molten Corporation. Japan Marine United (JMS) too conducts its shipbuilding from the city while Ryobi’s Hiroshima plant serves as major operational HQ for its tools/die-cast. Their bottomline matter; does the metaphor? As I sit at the Hiroshima station watching the Christmas festivities and enjoying some amazing Conveyor Belt Sushi, I still feel like the child wondering when the next bunch of kindergarteners willcollapse to the signal of “all fall down”, never to get up.
The writer is a veteran journalist and the Dean of theTagore Institute of Peace Studies