We’ve all heard the saying that if we don’t learn lessons from history, we are in danger of repeating it.
This is especially true for the bad things we’ve experienced. And it seems especially true about our history of violence and war.
This year in August the world marked the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The United States dropped bombs on these cities during World War II.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ve heard about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. But seeing a picture of the remains of a statue of Mary that survived one of those bombs made those tragedies a reality for me.
A scorched head of a statue of Mary (pictured with this editorial) remained after the blast that destroyed Nagasaki’s Urakami Cathedral on August 9, 1945. The statue once graced the main altar of the cathedral. The haunting eyes of the statue remind viewers of what it might have been like for the 75,000 people who died during the blast.
