To the editor:

At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. A physicist named Robert Serber named the bomb Little Boy.

By 8:16 am, 140,000 people in the city were dead. Less than 10% of the casualties were military. Thousands of the dead were Korean slave laborers. No one has tried to figure out how many were children, how many were old, or sick or happy. But we know they all had moments yet to live.

The ground zero temperature was 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat evaporated the city’s water, which fell back to earth as radioactive black rain. The rain started about 8:45 a.m. and lasted for hours.

These are some of the reasons that the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice has stood vigil on Aug. 6 for many years. We stood to say “never again.” We stood to say this was wrong and still is wrong and we must never let it happen again, especially in our names.

At the moment of the blast, it was 6:15 p.m., Aug. 5, 1945, in Lawrence — safe, cool Lawrence. On this 75th anniversary at 6:15 p.m., Aug. 5, 2020, let each of us observe one minute of silence to remember those 140,000 people. From your quarantine, from your shelter, from your safety, remember.

Christine Smith,

Lawrence