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Jan 2, 2019 · The bomb, dropped by the US on August 6 1945, made orphans of around 2,000 children, mostly from central Hiroshima, who survived because they had been evacuated to the countryside.
- Elizabeth Chappell
- Overview
- Hellish fires and whirlwinds
- The aftermath
- Ground zero
It's hard to fathom the nuclear holocaust that laid waste to this now vibrant city 75 years ago.
The official plans had been appropriately grand: 11,500 attendees would gather in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park for a somber ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city by the United States on August 6, 1945. But the pandemic had other plans.
As it has done in most cities around the world, the COVID-19 virus has altered or canceled much of Hiroshima’s daily life: concerts, marathons, museum exhibits. The anniversary ceremony will still take place on August 6, albeit with 10,000 fewer attendees. Only bomb survivors—or hibakusha—and their families may now attend. Audience members will be seated six feet apart in the park. World leaders, no longer able to attend in person, have been asked to submit video messages instead.
Hiroshima is harrowingly familiar with abrupt, unfathomable tragedy. But when I visited the city in late 2018, I was struck by how ordinary it looked and felt. I recall sitting on the narrow, elegant Motoyasu Bridge watching a bustling morning scene. Briefcase-carrying commuters in suits walked and biked across the bridge. Schoolchildren in uniforms skipped by in small groups. Nearby, a riverside café with a pretty fruit stand and ice cream stall out front was getting ready to open.
It could have been a scene from any city. But Hiroshima, of course, is not just any city. About 500 yards north of Motoyasu Bridge stands another bridge, the Aioi. The span was the original target for the bombing crew of the Enola Gay, which dropped a nearly 10,000-pound uranium bomb that detonated close to the spot where I was perched.
I was in Hiroshima to do research and conduct interviews for my book about World War II reporter John Hersey—the first journalist to reveal the true aftermath of the bomb here, particularly its radioactive impact on human beings. I was especially keen to meet Koko Tanimoto Kondo, a prominent peace activist and one of the last surviving protagonists of Hersey’s blockbuster article, “Hiroshima,” which was published in the August 31, 1946, issue of the New Yorker and later became a book.
When the U.S. dropped the bomb—dubbed “Little Boy” and scribbled with profane messages to the Japanese emperor—on Hiroshima, tens of thousands of people were burned to death or buried alive by collapsing buildings or bludgeoned by flying debris. Those directly under the bomb’s detonation point, or hypocenter, were incinerated, instantaneously erased from existence. The true death toll—estimates have ranged between 100,000 and 280,000—will never be known.
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Koko Tanimoto Kondo was eight months old when the bomb hit less than a mile from her home, causing it to collapse. Her mother managed to dig out of the wreckage, and they both survived. Like other bomb survivors, the painful experiences of her childhood compel Ms. Kondo to work for peace, including leading a peace study tour throughout Japan, and sharing her story in venues around the world.
Koko Tanimoto Kondo was eight months old when the bomb hit less than a mile from her home, causing it to collapse. Her mother managed to dig out of the wreckage, and they both survived. Like other bomb survivors, the painful experiences of her childhood compel Ms. Kondo to work for peace, including leading a peace study tour throughout Japan, and sharing her story in venues around the world.
“You dig two feet and there are [still] bones,” Hidehiko Yuzaki, the governor of Hiroshima Prefecture, told me. “We’re living on that. Not only near the epicenter, but across the city.”
Soon tens of thousands of occupation troops arrived in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, destroyed by a second atomic bomb three days after Hiroshima. Even though the flattened cities were essentially graveyards, they were treated less than reverently by some of the “occupationaires,” as they called themselves. (Shifting circumstances and last-minute choices doomed the Nagasaki.)
In Nagasaki, U.S. Marines cleared bomb debris to play a football game, which they dubbed the Atom Bowl. Over the next year, many soldiers came to Hiroshima’s ground zero to have their picture taken and collect “bomb souvenirs.” It was a “treasure area” of buried curios and heirlooms, recalled one visiting American doctor, who gathered up a few broken porcelain cups to use for ashtrays. But fear of possible residual radiation kept warier occupationaires away from the hypocenter site.
Left:
Victims of the bomb rest in peace in a hillside cemetery on the wooded ground of the ninth-century Mitaki Temple. Its name derives from three nearby waterfalls whose water is offered at the annual Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony.
Right:
A young visitor at the Fukuromachi Elementary School Peace Museum holds a paper crane, a symbol of peace in Japan. Some 160 students and teachers perished at the school, one of the closest to ground zero.
When I interviewed Ms. Kondo in the lobby of a boxy, modern hotel on Peace Boulevard, she told me about August 6, 1945. Although she was too young then to remember the events herself, her mother told her about the day—but not until Ms. Kondo was much older.
"I could not ask my parents how I survived," she told me. "I knew if I asked, they would have to recall the worst day of their life. When I was 40, she told me what happened. The whole house crashed, everything on top of her body, which protected me. She was unconscious, and when she came to, it was dark. There was no light coming through. She heard a baby’s crying voice—it was mine. It was her own baby. She thought it was someone else’s. My mother called, 'Please, help!'—but no one came. Then she could see the small light coming through the [rubble]. And she moved little by little and made a hole, and got out with me." All they saw when they emerged was fire engulfing their neighborhood.
Ms. Kondo also showed me a family photo album from the years that followed. Then she opened a plastic bag and took out the tiny pink cotton dress she’d worn that day. Remarkably intact, the garment brought the catastrophe to life for me. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is filled with such humanizing artifacts: a broken watch that stopped exactly at 8:15 A.M., a scalded tricycle unearthed from the ruins.
After the interview, we strolled to a small Italian restaurant near the museum for lunch. I noticed that many American businesses had set up in the city; McDonalds and Starbucks franchises loosely ring Peace Memorial Park. After lunch we visited the memorials and monuments in the park. Visitors lined up before the Cenotaph for Atomic Bomb Victims, several bowing quietly before it. We walked back to the Aioi Bridge, the Enola Gay’s target. When the bomber dropped Little Boy, it drifted in the air and detonated slightly off-target. Where, I asked Ms. Kondo, is the literal hypocenter?
She led me to an empty, three-block-long street nearby and stopped in front of a low-rise medical building with graying tiles on its exterior. Next door was a 7-Eleven. Here, she said, and pointed to a small plaque in front of the medical building.
“The first atomic bomb used in the history of humankind exploded approximately 600 meters above this spot,” it read. “The city below was hit by heat rays of approximately 3,000 to 4,000 degrees C, along with a blast wind and radiation. Most people in the area lost their lives instantly.”
Through belongings left by the victims, A-bombed artifacts, testimonies of A-bomb survivors and related materials, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum conveys to the world the horrors and the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons and spreads the message of “No More Hiroshimas.”
Oct 11, 2024 · The Hiroshima Peace Memorial consists of the ruins of a building that was destroyed by a U.S. atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. It is a memorial to those killed and is intended to serve as a witness to the nuclear devastation and a symbol of hope for peace.
Hiroshima remembers atomic bomb victims. Many people gathered at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park in the early hours on Sunday. They came to share their wishes for peace.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is a museum located in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, in central Hiroshima, Japan, dedicated to documenting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in World War II. The museum was established in August 1955 with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall (now the International Conference Center Hiroshima [ ja ] ).
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Aug 5, 2024 · Remembering the tragic events of August 1945. What was previously scorched rubble is now Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. The world's first atomic bomb used as a weapon of war was dropped on...
