By Lee San

A war that shouldn't have been

June 28, 1914, on a sunny Sunday in Sarajevo, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were riding on a horse cart. When their motorcade was near the Miljacka River about a hundred meters from the City Hall where they started, a bomb thrown by Nedeljko Čabrinović, a member of "Black Hand", missed the target. The Archduke was lucky to have narrowly cheated death.

After a short break, the motorcade proceeded and when the horse cart was crossing the Latin Bridge, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip fired two shots at the Archduke and his wife, and killed both on the spot.

The assassination greatly enraged the powerful Austrian Emperor who instantly issued Serbia an ultimatum to turn in the assassins, but the request was ignored. Out of fury, the Emperor launched the July Crisis: the Austro-Hungairan Empire officially declared war on Serbia. The Germans seized the opportunity to form an alliance with Austro-Hungarian Empire in hope of getting a slice of the bounty. In the meantime, the Allies of France, Britain, Russia and the US were also eager to jump in to expand their influences. A world war could be started any time.

The utterly chaotic situation went out of control and eventually ignited the first world war which lasted for four years, affecting 1.5 billion innocent people living in 30 countries, with a final toll of some 30 million people.

The weird thing is, this whole thing started all because of the two gun shots fired on Latin Bridge as well as the Emperor's wrath and personal lust.

The bombings

At 8.00a.m. August 6, 1945, like other first year undergraduates, Abdul Razak Abdul Hamid from British Malaya was ready to attend class at Hiroshima Bunn University. What he was not aware was that the faint humming sound in the sky was actually from an American B-29 bomber. Everyone was thinking that during wartime the siren would be sounded if a hostile aircraft was spotted approaching.

In a couple of moments, the Enola Gay bomber piloted by Paul Tibbets decided to drop the 64kg Little Boy some 9,400 meters above Aioi Bridge. The atomic bomb was detonated exactly 550 meters above the city at 8.15a.m., forming toxic mushroom clouds.

That was the first atomic bomb dropped by a human at a human settlement in human history. And the ground zero was a mere 1.5km from Abdul Razak's university.

129,000 civilians perished instantly from the Hiroshima bombing, and up to 200,000 if we were to include those indirectly killed by the bomb, including Razak's fellow Malayan classmates Nik Yusof and Syed Omar. Luckily 1,760 foreigners, mostly Koreans, survived the bombing.

19-year-old Razak was the sole survivor from Malaya. The other two survivors were Yura Halim from Brunei and Hasan Rahaya from Indonesia. Following the disaster, the three students actively joined the rescue operation and saved many lives.

Unfortunately, three days after the bombing, on August 9, Nagasaki, a city 420km to the south of Hiroshima, was flattened by Fat Man, another atomic bomb. 226,000 people were killed on the spot. Ten days later, the three young students from Southeast Asia were safely sent to Tokyo for treatment and they later completed their studies in Japan.

April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide, and the war in Europe ended on May 18. In August that year, two atomic bombs were dropped in Japan, forcing it to surrender on August 15. On September 12, the second world war officially ended. More than 2 billion people in 61 countries and territories were embroiled in the six-year war that decimated more than 90 million lives.

World War II survivor Yura Halim later became the chief minister of Brunei in 1967. He died at the age of 91.

Meanwhile, Hasan Rahaya became a prominent politician in Indonesia, and he also lived for 91 years.

As for our Abdul Razak, he was a Japanese language teacher and renowned educator. In 1982, he was appointed the head of the Malaysian government's Look East policy. He died at the age of 88.

Having survived the Hiroshima bombing, the three of them made remarkable achievements in their respective careers later, and witnessed the rise of Japan as a prosperous and peace-loving nation.

The undeclared third war

January 20, 2021, Donald Trump left the White House at the end of his disgraceful four-year presidency, during which he successfully ignited the flame of aggressive populism, conflicts, hatred and division, with ramifications across the globe. Leaders of some countries have taken cue from him, tearing up their societies and setting the world ablaze.

The ignorance of these people have indirectly set the undeclared third war into action. Sadly, almost 100 million people were taken down in just 12 months, two million lives sacrificed.

Don't tell me this virus has nothing to do at all with those power-hungry, unscrupulous leaders!

History teaches us that all the wars have been started by unsatiated greed and corrupted minds of those in power, with poor civilians their innocent sacrifices.

So, shall we castrate the lust of these bloody political goons and return peace and prosperity to our beloved nation?

(Lee San is Founder and Group Executive Chairman of Apple Vacations. He has traveled to 132 countries, six continents, and enjoys sharing his travel stories and insights. He has also authored five books.)