Hiroshima-site of first nuclear attack
Trip Start
Jan 25, 2007
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Trip End
Jan 25, 2008
Hiroshima, Japan
Friday, April 20, 2007
in Hiroshima, the first city in the world to be subjected to a nuclear
attack.
Just like Nagasak, Hiroshima is once again a thriving city with very
little to indicate the horrors that happened here just over sixty years
ago. The only indication is the memorial in the middle of the city
where there is a peace park and the preserved remains of the Hiroshima
dome that was directly below the bomb blast and so stayed standing due
to the force pushing directly down on the building rather than to the
side. This building is a poignant reminder of what happened on the 6th
of August 1945 and the people of hiroshima have pledged to maintain it
in perpetuity as a constnt reminder of the horrors of nuclear weapons.
The peace park is obviously dedicated to world peace and also contains
a colletion of paper cranes made by school children. The crane is a
symbol of health in Japan and when a little girl from Hiroshima was
diagnosed with cancer due to radiation some years after the attack all
her school friends made paper cranes in the hope she would get better.
Unfortunately she died but the tradition of making the cranes has been
kept up. They are now stored behind glass cages as a few years ago a
Japanese graduate set ire to them as a protest against `poor emploment
opportunities in Japan`. I I can`t imagine the Judge was too lenient on
him for this.
There s also a museum near the peace park which is similar to the one
in Nagasaki with a lot more of the history including details of the
develpoment of the bomb. It cost something ike $6 billion and 300,000
men were working on the project so it just shows what a huge
undertaking it must have been. $6 billion even today is a lot of money
and back then would have been astronomical. Again there were more
remains on dislay including a childs tricycle, the child obviously
having been kiled in the blast.
