By NIKOLAY PALCHIKOFF

[R]ENO, Nev. -- I was one of the first American soldiers to visit Hiroshima after its destruction by the atomic bomb 56 years ago today. Until recently, it was not something I talked about.

Still now, at 77, it's hard not to cry when I picture walking into that city more than half a century ago. But it's important to remember. There are few of us around who do.

I went to Hiroshima some three weeks after the fatal day. I had been born and raised there and was going home to search for my family. My father was a member of the Russian nobility and had been an officer in the White Army. He fled Russia with my mother during the Russian Revolution and settled in Japan.

I grew up eating piroshki and sushi, speaking Russian and Japanese. Before the war, when I was 16, I left Japan to go to school in the United States. The rest of my family stayed behind.

After Pearl Harbor, like many 18- year old boys, I yearned to become a soldier. With my Slavic ethnicity and Japanese language fluency, I became a member of United States Army intelligence, working in translation and interrogation.

I first heard about the bombing of Hiroshima the day it happened. I was 21 at the time, translating Japanese radio in the Philippines. No one believed my reports. My Army superiors ridiculed my translation skills. The next day, President Harry Truman announced to the world that, indeed, the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Soon afterward I was sent to Japan to help make sure the Japanese were living up to the conditions of the surrender agreement, and I traveled to Hiroshima. It was the worst moment of my life. Although I had seen wartime atrocities, I wasn't prepared for what I saw now: nothing. No birds. No people. No buildings. No trees. No life. Outlines of human bodies burned like negatives in cement.

The house I had grown up in was gone. The city had vaporized.

Fortunately, just a few days before Hiroshima was attacked, my family had moved to a house far enough away from the bomb's epicenter so that they survived. When I found them, there was a moment of joy, until they described the bomb's aftermath: People walking and dropping dead in their tracks. People running for the river, seeking escape from the scorching heat. Skin falling off bodies. Everyone desperate for water.

My family and I left for Tokyo and then went to America. I vowed never to return. What does one do after walking into a nuclear dust bowl? Like many, I believed that peace could come only from having a strong defense. I decided to remain in the Army while the United States prepared for its newest enemies, the Russians.

During the Cuban missile crisis I built an elaborate bomb shelter under my house, complete with water, septic tank and canned food. I was ready for an attack.

One day the reserves called me away from work to participate in an "emergency" drill. But when I discovered they were simulating a nuclear war in the drill, and that my job was to keep the "contaminated" people away from the "noncontaminated" people, something suddenly didn't seem right. I knew that in a real nuclear war there would be few people standing around, contamination would affect everyone and most people would be dead. I began to rethink the Army's mission and soon resigned.

For a long time, despite what I had seen in Hiroshima, I thought dropping the bomb had been the right thing to do. I believed what Truman had said, that the bomb had saved lives. But as we entered the arms race with the Soviet Union, my mind began to change. I had seen the destruction that was felt for generations to come. I feared for the future of my grandchildren.

Often, I envisioned my classmates, evaporated by the bomb. Why couldn't the United States have dropped the bomb on an island with no inhabitants to show Japan what a powerful weapon it had?

I have returned to Hiroshima twice since 1945, once in 1986 and once in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the bombing. On that second trip, I walked for one month, in the scorching heat of Japan's summer, from Kobe to Hiroshima, talking to Japanese people about my experiences. I spoke at a conference in Hiroshima commemorating the anniversary, begging forgiveness for any part I might have played in what I now consider a heinous crime. It was a speech I couldn't finish. But I had come to realize that remembering and talking about such atrocities is the only way we can prevent them from happening again.

Nikolay Palchikoff is a retired businessman.