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Picture: A-Bomb Dome

The last remanent of the 1945 A-Bomb blasts, the A-Bomb Dome stands in Hiroshima as a reminded of the lives lost to the only two Atomic Bombs ever detonated.

The building now known as the A-Bomb Dome was designed by Czech architect Jan Letzel and was completed in April 1915. With its distinctive green dome this magnificent building was soon a beloved Hiroshima landmark.

Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall before the bombing

The hall was used to display and sell products from the local prefecture.  Its offices provided market research and consulting for local commercial enterprises, but its galleries also served as venues for art exhibitions, fairs and a variety of cultural events.

Through the years the name changed to Hiroshima Prefectual Products Exhibition Hall, then Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, as its functions expanded. As the war lengthened and intensified the hall's promotional activities dwindled.  By April 1944 it was housing the Chugoku-Shikoku Public Works Office of the Interior Ministry, the Hiroshima District Lumber Control Corporations and other government offices.

At 8:15am August 6, 1945, an American B29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb (uranium), the first atomic bombing in human history. The bomb exploded approximately 600m above and 160m to the southeast of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. The building was crushed and gutted by fire. Everyone in the building died immediately.

However, because the blast came from almost directly above, some of the walls of the building remained standing, leaving enough of the building and iron structure at the top to be recognisable as a dome. After the war the badly damaged skeletal remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall came to be known as the A-Bomb Dome.

Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall immediately after the bombing

For many years opinions about the Dom were divided. Some felt it should be preserved as a memorial to the bombing, while others, calling it a dangerously dilapidated structure that evoked painful memories, advocated its destruction.

Gradually, as the city was rebuilt and other A-bombed buildings vanished the desire to preserve the Dome gathered strength. In 1966 the Hiroshima City Council passed a resolution declaring that the A-Bomb Dome would be preserved in perpetuity. This led to a campaign to raise the funds required to physically preserve the Dome. Donations poured in from those who wished for peace, both from within Japan and overseas. The first preservation project was implemented in 1967. Subsequently several preservation projects have 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 formally registered on the World Heritage List as a historic witness to the tragedy of human history's first use of a nuclear weapon and as a universal peace monument appealing for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realisation of lasting world peace. To help protect the Dome, the national government designated the area around it a historic site under the Cultural Properties Protection Act, with a larger area in and around the Peace Memorial Park set aside as a buffer zone.

Hiroshima immediately after the bombing

Children's Peace Monument

Children's Peace Monument

As the Pacific War dragged on and intensified, schools were commandeered to quarter soldiers or house factories. Losing both opportunity and space to study, students were organized and forced into factories as "mobilized students." Because of war, schools stopped holding classes-they lost their educational function. On August 6, 1945, it is thought that 26,800 students were mobilized in Hiroshima and at least 7,200 died from the atomic bombing. The building demolition projects taking place in the centre of the city amplified the tragedy by creating even more young victims. This special exhibition presents the devastation inflicted on mobilized students with 190 items

This monument stands in memory of all the children who died as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.  The monument was originally inspired by the death of Sadako Sasaki who was exposed to radiation from the atomic bomb at the age of two, ten years later Sadako developed the leukaemia that ultimately ended her life. Sadako's untimely death compelled her classmates to begin a call for the construction of a monument for all children who died due to the atomic bomb. Built with contributions from more than 3,200 schools in Japan and donors from nine countries, the Children's Peace Monument was unveiled on May 5 1958.

At the top of the 9m monument a bronze statue of a young girl lifts a golden crane entrusted with dreams for a peaceful future. Figures of a boy and a girl are located on the sides of the monument. The inscription on the stone block under the monument reads;

"This is our cry. This is our prayer. For building peace in his world"

On the surface of the bell hung inside the monument are the phrases carved in the handwriting of Dr. Hideki Yukawa, Nobel Prise Laureate in Physics;

"A Thousand Paper Cranes"
"Peace on the Earth and in the Heavens"

Memorial Monument for Hiroshima, City of Peace

Memorial Monument for Hiroshima With the A-Bomb Dome and flame of peace in the background

This monument was erected in the hope that Hiroshima, devastated by the world's first atomic bomb on 6 August 1945, would be rebuilt as a city of peace. The epitaph reads;

"Let all the souls here rest in peace; For we shall not repeat the evil"

It summons people everywhere to pray for the repose of the souls of the deceased A-Bomb victims and to join in the pledge never to repeat the evil of war. It thus expressed the Heart of Hiroshima which enduring past grief and overcoming hatred yearns for the realisation of true world peace with the coexistence and prosperity of all humankind.

This monument is also called the "A-Bomb Cenotaph" because the stone chest in the centre contains the register of deceased A-Bomb victims.

The Flame of Peace - The pedestal was designed to suggest two hands pressed together at the wrist and bent back so that the palms point up to the sky. It expresses condolence for victims unable to satisfy their thirst for water, as well as the desire for nuclear abolition and enduring world peace.

The flame has burned continuously since it was lit on August 1, 1964. It symbolizes the anti-nuclear resolve to burn the flame "until the day when all such weapons shall have disappeared from the earth."
In the Flame of Peace Relay held each year, representatives of each community run through the cities, towns and villages of Hiroshima prefecture in an appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons and improvement of survivor assistance. It is used to light other flames as a symbol of peace in various events. In 1994, it lit the flame of the Asian Games held in Hiroshima City.

Peace Memorial Museum

This is the centrepiece of the Peace Memorial Park and is definitely a "must see". The museum is laid out in chronological order from the beginning of the war to the rebuilding of Hiroshima. It contains many first hand accounts of the blast and after effects as well as numerous artefacts and personal belongings of the victims.

The following accounts are excerpts from the museum.

Hiroshima Artefact

Shigeru Orimen was a first-year student at Second Hiroshima Prefectural Junior High School. He was exposed to the bomb at his building demolition work site at Nakajima-shin-machi; 600m from the hypocenter. His mother Shigeko searched for him desperately through the devastated city, but failed to find him.

Finally, she got information about him from an acquaintance and, early in the morning of August 9, she found a body with this lunch box clutched to the abdomen. Shigeru had worked diligently in place of his father and brother who were away at the front. He plowed the field and cultivated gardens on the mountain and in a bamboo grove. His lunch that day was made from the first harvest from his new field, which he had brought home so happily.

Shigeko's grief deepened when she realized that Shigeru never got a chance to eat the lunch he had been so eagerly anticipating.
 

Hiroshima Artefact

 

First year student at Second Hiroshima Prefectural Junior High School Tetsuo Kitabayashi (then, 12) was exposed to the bombing at his demolition work site in Nakajima-shin-machi; 600m from the hypocenter.

His father Sukemichi (then, 53) searched desperately through the city. Meanwhile, despite his severe injuries Tetsuo had returned to his home in Midori-machi on his own. Sukemichi and Tetsuo's mother Hatsue (then, 33) did everything they could to care for him, but he died at 4:00 p.m. on August 7.

In his memoirs of that day, Sukemichi wrote, "Twice, morning and afternoon, I just missed him. Such painful misfortune. I went upstairs for just a minute. When I got back, his pulse was gone. All is lost. I could never feel more rage and regret. During the wake, I couldn't stop crying."
 

Hiroshima Artefact

This item was donated by Toshiko Saeki (then, 25). Her mother Moto Mosoro (then, 54) was exposed to the A-bomb at her home in Hirose-moto-machi and disappeared. Toshiko, who lived in the suburbs, became worried about her family and immediately headed for downtown Hiroshima.

Her brother (then, 30) returned covered with blood. Her eldest brother had a gash in his head that went down to his skull, and his two small sons were totally burned. One had ribs sticking out of the skin. Her comparatively lightly injured sister (then, 18) also came home, and the whole family was reunited. However, they all died one after the next, even the ones who were not seriously injured.

Because she went in and out of the city after the bombing, Toshiko also became quite ill. Then, on September 6, her brother-in-law returned carrying Moto's head in a furoshiki (carrying cloth). The glasses she always wore had melted and were fused to the ridge over her eyes.
 

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Gallery

                                                    Click here to view the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Picture Gallery