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Sixty-three years ago this week, the U.S. launched nuclear attacks against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Today two men with ties to those historic events met for the first time, here in Utah.
Dick Sherwood and Takashi Hiraoka live an ocean apart but are brought together by a cause forged by war.
Sherwood was 21 when he embarked on a mission that would forever change the course of his life. He was a bomber pilot and would witness the aftermath unleashed by the deadliest weapon used in war.
Decades later, Sherwood declines to describe what he saw when he flew a reconnaissance mission the first hour after the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
"I'd rather stay away from that. It brings back the whole memory," he said.
After the war, Sherwood changed his college major from engineering to sociology and became a peace activist. He went to Japan in 1995. That's when he first saw Hiraoka, who was then mayor of Hiroshima.
Hiraoka, who lived in Korea when the bomb was dropped, was speaking at a peace ceremony. The two didn't formally meet then, but Hiraoka would come to know of Sherwood through a Japanese morning news report.
"I was very impressed and remember the beautiful scene of Dick meeting atomic bomb survivors," he said.
This morning, Hiraoka spoke at Utah Valley University about the dangers of nuclear weapons. That message is echoed by Sherwood, who says countries need to learn to work together, because war is not the answer.
"You just don't win. Both sides lose now," he said.
Hiraoka will speak at the Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemoration on Aug. 6 at the Salt Lake City Main Library. The evening's program will be followed by a candlelight vigil on the library plaza.
E-mail: syi@ksl.com
