Hiroshima

At 8.15am on 6 August 1945 the United States of America dropped the first of two atomic bombs on Japan. Exploding 600m above the centre of Hiroshima it created a blast wave and fire storm that devastated the city and which, by the end of 1945, had claimed the lives of some 140,000 people. A second, more powerful bomb, was dropped on Nagasaki three days later killing a further 74,000. Six days later on 15 August Japan surrendered to Allied forces. (It is sobering to learn that the next generation of nuclear weapons to be developed and tested, the hydrogen bomb, was over 600 times more powerful than the bomb that fell on Hiroshima!).

Today, the epicentre of that first explosion houses the Hiroshima Peace Park comprising a series of memorials to the victims of that devastating bomb. One structure that partly survived the explosion, (largely because it was directly below the explosion and therefore didn’t get hit sideways by the shock waves), has been preserved as a monument.

The park also houses a museum which records, without rancour or seeking to apportion blame, the events and decisions that led to the development of the atomic bomb as well as preserving for posterity eyewitness accounts of the survivors. And yes, amazingly there were survivors, albeit people who were 2km plus away from the centre where the bomb exploded. Their accounts are simply and movingly told.

The last place we visited was the National Peace Memorial Hall to the Victims of the Atomic Bomb with its simple water fountain in a room lined with a mural depicting the devastated city comprising 140,000 tiles representing each person killed by the bomb, either directly on that fateful morning or over the subsequent five months as people succumbed to their injuries or radiation sickness. It was a place to sit and pray and contemplate.

The Peace Park is a humbling place to visit. Without exception everyone there moved around the whole site in virtual silence, absorbing the horror of the events of August 1945. Those who have visited Auschwitz will have had a similar emotion.

I firmly hold the belief that every world leader, every president and prime minister elected or appointed to high office, should be required by international law to spend at least three hours at the Hiroshima Peace Park before they take up their leadership role. Maybe, just maybe, sanity would then prevail.