A skeletal brick and iron shell on the Motoyasu River, the Atomic Bomb Dome is the closest building to survive the hypocentre of the first nuclear attack. Left as a ruin since 1945, it stands in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park as a plain, unadorned statement about what happened there.
At a glance
The building now known as the Atomic Bomb Dome once stood in a busy commercial district of Hiroshima. After the bombing of 6 August 1945 its brick walls remained upright, stripped of their interior, because the blast struck almost directly overhead and the force was largely vertical rather than horizontal; only the iron frame of its dome survived, the copper cladding having burned away. Whether to keep the ruin at all was contested within the city itself, with some survivors wanting it demolished and others wanting it kept as evidence. Hiroshima voted to preserve it in 1966. Its nomination for UNESCO inscription in 1996 was also contested, with the United States and China objecting on political grounds, arguing that UNESCO was not the forum in which to judge the decision to drop the bomb. The nomination went ahead and the site was inscribed that year.
Key facts
- The bomb: codenamed Little Boy, a uranium gun-type device with a yield of around 15 kilotons, dropped from the B-29 Enola Gay flown by Colonel Paul Tibbets.
- Casualties: roughly 140,000 people had died in Hiroshima by the end of 1945, about 70,000 of them on the day of the bombing; deaths from radiation continued for decades afterwards.
- Sadako Sasaki: two years old and 1.7 kilometres from the hypocentre in 1945, she developed leukaemia and died in 1955 after folding 644 of a planned 1,000 paper cranes; classmates completed the rest, and the park’s Children’s Peace Monument is dedicated to her.
- The museum: the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, designed by Kenzo Tange and opened in 1955, holds personal items such as a child’s lunchbox, a tricycle belonging to a three-year-old victim, and a human shadow etched into stone by the bomb’s flash.
History
The building was originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, a neo-baroque commercial exhibition hall designed by the Czech architect Jan Letzel and completed in 1915. It stood roughly 600 metres from the point over which the atomic bomb detonated on 6 August 1945, at the end of the Manhattan Project, whose first test explosion had taken place at Trinity on 16 July that year. A second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August, and Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945.
The Peace Memorial Park that now surrounds the ruin opened in 1954, laid out along the Ota River delta on ground that had been dense city streets. Among its quieter features is the Memorial Mound, which holds the ashes of tens of thousands of victims who were never identified.
What you see
Kenzo Tange’s 1952 Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims is positioned so that its arch frames a direct view through to the Atomic Bomb Dome. Nearby, the Flame of Peace has burned continuously since 1964 and is pledged to keep burning until nuclear weapons are eliminated worldwide. The Peace Bell, cast the same year, is rung by visitors as an act of prayer for peace. Around the Children’s Peace Monument, strings of folded paper cranes sent from around the world accumulate in memory of Sadako Sasaki.
Practical information
- Visiting the park: this is a place of mourning as much as memory, and quiet, reflective behaviour is expected throughout.
- The museum: allow a good stretch of unhurried time; the exhibits, particularly the children’s personal effects, are emotionally demanding.
- Paper cranes: visitors can fold and leave their own cranes; origami kits are widely available in Hiroshima.
Getting there
From Hiroshima Station, tram lines run to stops close to the Dome and the Peace Memorial Park; some of the trams still in service date from before the bombing and survived it. Hiroshima is also reachable by Shinkansen from Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo. Current timetables and fares are best checked with the local tram operator and JR West directly.
Nearby
- Miyajima Island (Itsukushima Shrine) — a train and ferry journey away; a red torii gate that appears to float at high tide, a five-storey pagoda dating from 1407, and resident sacred deer; inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.
- Hiroshima Castle — about 1.5 km north of the Peace Memorial Park; the original was destroyed in the bombing and the present concrete reconstruction dates from 1958, with a museum covering the city’s feudal history.
- Shukkei-en Garden — about 1.5 km northeast; a strolling garden laid out in 1620 by Ueda Soko, largely destroyed by the bomb and restored from 1951, reportedly by the garden’s own director, who had survived the attack.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Hiroshima Peace Memorial
- Wikipedia, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- Wikipedia, Sadako Sasaki
- Wikipedia, Jan Letzel
- UNESCO, Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome), World Heritage List reference 775
- John Hersey, Hiroshima, The New Yorker, 1946
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See this place and what’s around it →Events here — now on & upcoming
- Anniversary: The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima — August 6, 194506 Aug 2027See the event →
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