大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Catherine Garvie, Learning Project Manager at 大象传媒 Scotland on behalf of Thomas M Robertson and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

On the afternoon of 6th August 1945 I was standing on the railway platform at a large new irrigation system to help with the development of crops in the Deccan of Central India and around Mysore

I had just had a photograph taken with a nomadic tribe of the original Gypsy people when I was approached by an Anglo Indian man who asked me if I was a member of the British Forces and had I heard the latest news in English from the All-Indian Radio. I answered yes to his first question and no the second. He then said he had heard a claim that a town in Japan had been obliterated by the Americans with enormous casualties using a single new type of weapon. I doubted his statement and then thought of my position as I was on leave from my base in the Royal Navy at HMS Chinkara on the island of Venduruthy and near the port of Cochin now in Kerala.

I then though of my position being on leave as my Unit Navel Party 4261 had completed all engineering overhauling of landing and assault craft engines for the retaking of Singapore and Malaysian ports in the near future. I also thought of my parents and my girl friend and what the changes in my future would be. As my train made its way to Mysore I talked with friends who were also making their way back to the hotel and we decided we had to get a bus back over the mountains to our leave base at Wellington, a former Indian army fort which was 6000ft up in the Western Ghats in the Nilgiris tea growing area.

The following day we did get a bus back to Wellington and then heard the devastated town鈥檚 name was Hiroshima and about the enormous number of people dead as well as the first mention of an Atomic Bomb. I thought of the changes we could expect if the Japanese would not accept the surrender terms and what our survival chances would be after the said bombing, as well as the threat of more raids and possible bombs. The civilian casualty numbers were frightening to say the least. Sympathy was not around as the Allied losses in the Pacific Islands assaults were enormous and the navel ships lost were too heavy, and we knew from lectures and film shows that the life expectancy was very limited in the Seac area of future battles.

By the time I returned two days later to HMS Chinkara, Nagasaki had also been bombed with an atomic weapon and the Japanese decided to ask for peace on the allied conditions, and so it duly happened. We in my Unit all survived and the world entered the Atomic Age. So many Japanese civilians perished. I do hope a big lesson has been learned and in conclusion , I have been around to write this short story.

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