Sonia Krishnan

Decades have passed and the scars have faded but Akihiro Takahashi still sees the world through the prism of August 6, 1945.

What sliced through his core was the silence that followed after Hiroshima disintegrated to ashes in a blinding flash. Why hadn‚t the world risen up against the inhumanity of nuclear war? This collective hush conveyed a clear message ˆ get over it, move on.

Takahashi was quiet for 20 years but discovered a pain more unbearable than his physical injuries. In 1965, he had an epiphany. Peace could never materialize without understanding. So he set out to tell a story - his own.

I heard Takahashi, now 73, speak last month about that August morning as an AAJA fellow sent to Hiroshima to cover the Pan-Asian Youth Leadership Summit for the United Nations Development Program.

The program was part of a series of youth-focused meetings through the UNDP to tackle poverty reduction and instill peace initiatives around the globe.

Ironically, it was the first time I discovered the true extent of the A-bomb annihilation. Entering the exhibit of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was like stepping into a time machine. In an instant, I was transported back to 1945. I stood among the debris. I saw the mushroom radiation cloud billow above my head. I witnessed the mother who could only identify her 13-year-old son by the charred remains of his lunch box.

War is hell. But if something bleaker than hell existed, I was sure this was it.

In high school, our teachers told us that the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the first atomic weapons used in human history - were necessary to put an end to WWII. By 1945, they said, Japan was considerably weakened by the war, but its militarism remained relentless. If the war continued, it would have meant scores of American casualties. More of our blood lost on foreign soil.

President Harry Truman reasoned that dropping the A-bomb on Japan would force an immediate surrender and save thousands of lives in the long-run. Hiroshima and Nagasaki lost a combination of more than 300,000 people from the fallout. Robert Oppenheimer, the lead scientist behind the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Laboratory, who achieved infamy as the "Father of the A-bomb," resigned from his post two months after the attacks, saying he had blood on his hands. Scholars have grappled with the complexity of Truman‚s decision ever since.

Now, almost sixty years later, the threat of nuclear proliferation still looms large and America is embroiled in another war. But standing in the middle of the exhibit, I was seized by one thought ˆ we must remember this. Forgetting only serves to spread the venom of hatred.

And "hatred," Takahashi said, "never wipes out hatred."

He plans to repeat this until his last breath. It‚s his way of making peace with the past ˆand igniting hope into the future."