Dark memories stir anew.

It was 61 years ago yesterday, but Americans of the Greatest Generation will remember precisely where they were at the moment they heard the news of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Some cheered, others wept, and everyone knew that the terrible, beautiful bomb had killed thousands of the enemy, but saved up to 250,000 American lives by abruptly ending any question of military superiority. The horror story of World War II ended with an atomic punctuation mark.

In Japan, there was only weeping on Aug. 6, 1945. Japanese fortunate enough to survive Hiroshima and Nagasaki and an emperor's blind imperialism have their memories, too. It is a provocative sample of those memories in the form of photographs, artifacts and letters that is now on display at the Atomic Testing Museum at 755 E. Flamingo Road.

Sunday morning outside the front gate of the Nevada Test Site, members of the Nevada Desert Experience gathered for a mass and peaceful protest that called for an end to war and the use of atomic bombs. They remembered Hiroshima Day not as the marking of the end of a world war, but as the start of a new chapter in world warfare.

Hiroshima memories deserve their place, and the atomic museum is to be lauded for playing host to the Atomic Bomb Exhibition this month. But I suspect that many older Southern Nevadans who experienced the war, whether on the front lines or the home front, won't set foot in the place.

Edythe Katz Yarchever also has her memories of World War II and the first Hiroshima Day. As a young member of the Women's Division of the Massachusetts National Guard, Edythe drove ambulances and toiled as a medical secretary at Cushing General Hospital in Framingham, Mass., which was jammed with severely wounded soldiers and specialized in neurological injuries. She saw firsthand the waking nightmare of war.

Day after day the injured were wheeled through the front door. From 1942 to 1945, Edythe interviewed scores of broken young soldiers. Their beds jammed the rooms; their wheelchairs filled the hallways. And they were the lucky ones.

"Some of the things I saw and went through used to send me home in tears," she recalls. "My mother wanted me to stop what I was doing and go to work in a bank, but I wouldn't. In that hospital I saw hell."

She advocated for the American soldiers then, and I guess you could say she's still their advocate. That's why she says she won't attend the Hiroshima exhibit.

Although historians have argued that negotiations would have made the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions unnecessary, that terrible atomic bomb saved untold American and Japanese lives.

And the first Hiroshima Day?

Edythe remembers it very well. The tireless volunteer, who is perhaps best known to Southern Nevadans as the driving force behind the Governor's Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust, had signed on for overseas duty as a medical secretary. She was on an overloaded and unescorted troop ship packed full of American soldiers. The ship was bound from Seattle to Hawaii, then onward to Japan for a final battle that promised to be the bloodiest of the war.

"I'll never forget standing on the upper deck, looking down over all those soldiers," she says, the emotion filling her voice after six decades. "I was used to seeing wounded boys. But these soldiers were so strong, so formidable looking. Hundreds of the men had seen battle in Europe.

"Every day we had a lifeboat drill. On the sixth of August, we were standing there in our lifeboats wearing our life jackets, and the announcement came over the radio: They had dropped the atom bomb and the war was over.

"There was relief. There was cheering. They knew what was waiting for them was hell on Earth. Boy, was there cheering -- and thanking God. The Japanese are our friends now, and I feel sorry for anybody who went through this.

"But we should never forget what we went through, and we have nothing to apologize for."

Her dark memories of the hospital ward and the first Hiroshima Day, the pain mixed with the joy, are still too raw for objectivity.

Was it 61 years ago, or yesterday?

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.