World War Ii on Pitara Kids Network

From Heaven To Hell

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 04:05:15 +0000

Kaz Suyeishi will never forget the quiet peace of the cloudless August morning in 1945. The 18-year-old was in the front garden of her home in Hiroshima. She was chatting with a friend, when a gleam of silver in the sky caught her attention. “It looked like an angel,” she said. “It was the most beautiful airplane. It looked like heaven and peace.”

From Heaven To Hell [Image Source: Darkness of a Thousand Suns: Causes, Complexion and Consequences of the Nuclear Arms Race, by Delhi Science Forum]

The plane was ‘Enola Gay’, dropping the world’s first atomic bomb, nicknamed ‘Little Boy’, over the Japanese city, on August 6. “That little bomb changed heaven to hell,” recalled Suyeishi. The flash of silver disappeared, replaced by a white spot in the blue sky. The sky changed to gray. Then red. Then black. The next thing Suyeishi remembers is regaining consciousness under a mound of wreckage that had been her neighbour’s house. She is above 70.

A Train Journey beyond Childhood

Fri, 08 Nov 2002 18:35:39 +0000

The year was 1938, and the fear of war was looming before Europe. Hitler’s Nazi Germany was becoming more and more arrogant, with its fearful philosophy of the superiority of their (Aryan) race and the inferiority of the impure Jewish race, which made them less than human.

That year holds the key to one of the most tragic and unknown events of the Second World War era. For, in 1938, 10,000 German-Jewish children bade a final farewell to their parents before being sent off to foster homes in England. The intention was to save them from the wrath of Hitler’s regime.

A Film on Anne Frank

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 18:00:31 +0000

March 14: Anne Frank was a teenager when the Second World War broke out. And as Hitler’s Nazi Germany chillingly went about targeting Jews with death, her life changed beyond recognition. She lived in hiding for a while but was caught out and put in a concentration camp, where she died.

When in hiding, the young girl had kept a diary in which she had recorded her thoughts and impressions of what was happening to her and around her. After the war her writings were published under the title, Diary of a Young Girl. It was a phenomenal success.

Dia's Story

Thu, 23 May 2002 06:46:25 +0000

Dia, an 80-year-old labourer of Indian origin, lives in the corner of a cotton field in the western province of Kanchanaburi, Thailand. His rundown shack contains very little besides a military medal and a few clothes. The medal is a remnant of Dia’s eventful, if tragic, past.

It is a past that has included a stint at Myanmar (then Burma), as a prisoner captured by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II (1939 – 45). During this time he was made to work in the construction of a railway between Burma and Thailand.