Hiroshima: My visit to the historical site of Atomic bombings in the city of Japan

By John V.Tauro
Bellevision Media network

27 Jan 2013: During my recent visit to Hiroshima, a city of Japan that remains to be known for the Second World War nuclear bombings by the United States, I was left with mixed feelings on learning about the place that was before the destruction, the destruction itself and reconstruction of the city thereafter.

 

Pre-war Period:

Hiroshima became a major urban center during the imperial period as the Japanese economy shifted from primarily rural to urban industries. New industrial plants, including cotton mills, were established in Hiroshima in the late 19th century. During the First World War, Hiroshima became a focal point of military activity, as the Japanese government entered the war on the Allied side.

 

During the Second World War, the 2nd General Army and Chugoku Regional Army of Japan were headquartered in Hiroshima, and the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina port. The city also had large depots of military supplies, and was a key center for shipping.

 

The destruction:

On 6th August 1945, at 8:15am an atomic bomb filled with uranium for actual use was dropped by the US Air Force for the first time in history and exploded over the center of Hiroshima city. The epicenter was 580+20 meters above Shima Hospital located nearly in the heart of the city. The bomb is assumed to have had a yield of energy equivalent to 12.5+1 kilotons of TNT. The explosion instantly created an enormous fire ball like a small sun, releasing such intense heat rays and such strong radiation which caused a sudden great expansion of the surrounding air around and a high pressure blast more powerful than a typhoon. It is said that about 15% of the released energy was turned into radioactive rays, 35% into heat rays and 50% into the power of the blast.

 

 

 

The result was that 310,000 to 320,000 civilians and more than 40,000 soldiers were directly affected by the atomic bombing. About 140,000 of them including 20,000 soldiers were dead by the end of December, 1945 and 90% of them were supposed to have been killed within two weeks.

 

In Hiroshima in those days, there were approximately 76,000 buildings and 92% of them were destroyed by the blast, and ensuing fire. The city of Hiroshima is on a flat delta and the destruction covered the whole city co-centrically. The blast was so powerful as to do a great deal of damage to 60% of the buildings even in the district 5 kilometers far from the hypocenter. They say only 6,180 buildings (8%) were available in and around the city. The area covering 13 square kilometers had been entirely transformed into wide stretch of A-bomb- affected ruins.

 

The A-Bomb Dome:

The building, now known as the A-Bomb Dome was designed by Czech architect Jan Letzel. The Hiroshima prefectural commercial exhibition hall soon became a beloved Hiroshima landmark with its distinctive green dome.

 

While its business functions included commercial research and consulting services and the display and sale of prefectural products, the hall was also used for art exhibitions, and cultural events.

 

 

Through the years, it took on new functions and was renamed The Hiroshima Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall, then the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. As the war intensified, however, the hall was taken over by the Chugoku-Shikoku Public works office of the interior ministry, the Hiroshima district Lumber Control Corporation, and other government agencies.

 

On the day of the bombing, the bomb exploded approximately 600 meters above and 160 meters southeast of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, ripping through and igniting the building, instantly killing everyone in it.

 

Because the blast struck from almost directly above, some of the center walls remained standing, leaving enough of the building and iron frame to be recognizable as a dome.

 

After the war, these dramatic remains came to be known as the A-Bomb Dome. For many years, public opinion about the dome remained divided. Some felt it should be preserved as a memorial to the bombing, while others thought it should be destroyed as a dangerously dilapidated structure evoking painful memories.

 

As the city was rebuilt and other A-bombed buildings vanished, the voices calling for preservation gathered strength. In 1966, the Hiroshima City Council passed a resolution to preserve the A-bomb dome, which led to a public fundraising campaign to finance the construction work. Donations poured in with wishes for peace from around Japan and overseas, making the first preservation project possible in 1967.

 

Several preservation projects have since been carried out to ensure that the dome will always look as it did immediately after the bombing.

 

In December 1996, the A-bomb dome was registered on the world heritage list, as a historical witness conveying the horror of the first use of a nuclear weapon, and as a world peace monument appealing continually for lasting peace and the abolition of such weapons.

 

To help protect the dome, the national government designated the area around it as a historic site under the Cultural Properties Protection Act, with a larger area in and around Peace memorial park set aside as a buffer zone.

 

Reconstruction of the city:

It is hard to comprehend what the immediate aftermath must have been like in Hiroshima. There were the grim tasks of collecting the bodies and burning them, of clearing the rubble and debris. In all, 2.4 million sq. meters had to be cleared and surveyed, a painstaking process that took four years.

 

Hiroshima Officials, proposed the construction of a large peace memorial as the city’s new anchor. The memorial eventually became the Peace Memorial Park, a graceful 30-acre site not far from ground zero.

 

In 1949, a design was selected for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, the closest surviving building to the location of the bomb’s detonation, was designated the Genbaku Dome or "Atomic Dome", a part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The park’s emotional centerpiece became the Peace Museum, dedicated to recalling the horror of nuclear war. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was opened in 1955 in the Peace Park.

 

 

Hiroshima today is a pleasant, prosperous city of 1.1 million people, with everyday concerns that are mostly no different from those of any other city in the developed world.

 

Hiroshima was proclaimed a City of Peace by the Japanese parliament in 1949. As a result, the city of Hiroshima received more international attention as a desirable location for holding international conferences on peace as well as social issues. As part of that effort, the Hiroshima Interpreters’ and Guide’s Association (HIGA) was established in 1992 in order to facilitate interpretation for conferences, and the Hiroshima Peace Institute was established in 1998 within the Hiroshima University.

 

The city government continues to advocate the abolition of all nuclear weapons and the Mayor of Hiroshima is the president of Mayors for Peace, an international mayoral organization mobilizing cities and citizens worldwide to abolish and eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2020.