4. Hiroshima, Japan (1945)



The Memorial Cenotaph at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in 2018.  Image credit: Balon Greyjoy; Wikipedia  

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in the centre of Hiroshima, Japan, is dedicated to the legacy of Hiroshima as the first city in the world to suffer a nuclear attack at the end of World War II, and to the memories of the bomb's direct and indirect victims (of whom there may have been as many as 140,000).  The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is visited by more than one million people each year. It was planned and designed by the Japanese architect Kenzō Tange.

Among the Park’s features is the Flame of Peace, seen through the Memorial Cenotaph in the image above. Its pedestal was designed to suggest two hands pressed together at the wrist and bent back so that the palms point up to the sky. The flame has burned continuously since it was lit on August 1, 1964, and is intended to burn until the day when ‘all nuclear weapons shall have disappeared from the earth’.



‘At 8.15 on the morning of 6 August 1945, the city of Hiroshima was devastated by the first atomic bomb to be used as a weapon of war. The bomb, nicknamed ‘Little Boy’, was dropped from the USAAF B29 bomber ‘Enola Gay’ and exploded some 1,800 feet above the city. Delivering the equivalent of around 12.5 kilotons of TNT, the bomb reduced five square miles of the city centre to ashes and caused the deaths of an estimated 120,000 people within the first four days following the blast. Many were instantly vaporised by the explosion, others died afterwards from the effects of burns and radiation.’  Source: https://www.iwm.org.uk



Image credit Wikipedia

Within the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and visible from the Memorial Cenotaph is the structure known as the A-Bomb Dome or Genbaku Dome, the skeletal ruins of the former Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. It is the building closest to the hypocentre of the nuclear bomb that remained at least partially standing. It was left as it was after the bombing in memory of the casualties. It is an officially designated site of memory for the Japanese nation’s and humanity’s collectively shared heritage of catastrophe. The A-Bomb Dome was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List on December 7, 1996.



The Children's Peace Monument  

Also within the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is the Children's Peace Monument, which commemorates a young girl, Sadako Sasaki, along with the thousands of other child victims of the atomic bombing.



The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum  

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is the primary museum in the park dedicated to educating visitors about the bomb. The Museum has exhibits and information covering the build-up to war, the role of Hiroshima in the war up to the bombing, and extensive information on the bombing and its effects, along with substantial memorabilia and pictures from the bombing. The building also has views of the Memorial Cenotaph, Peace Flame, and A-Bomb Dome.  It was designed by Kenzō Tange in 1955.

Seventy-five years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Hiroshima Initiative was developed as a new proposal to strengthen initiatives toward the realization of a peaceful world without nuclear weapons. The outline of the plan was announced in March 2021. The Hiroshima Organization for Global Peace (HOPe) was established on April 1, 2021 as the promotion organization for the Hiroshima Initiative. You can read about it here.

Sources: Imperial War Museum; Wikipedia 

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