Sunday, August 07, 2011

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park


If you want to juxtapose your emotions, visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. It offers a feeling of melancholic gloom for the devastation caused by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima contrasted against a sense of comforting happiness to see present day Hiroshima a bustling and vibrant city literally risen from the ashes.

Hiroshima is the first city in history subjected to nuclear warfare when the nuclear weapon ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on the city by the B-29 bomber Enola Gay on August 6, 1945 during World War II. The city was destroyed and an estimated 80,000 people were directly killed by the bomb.

The A-Bomb Dome, almost the hypocenter of the atomic bomb blast, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The uranium bomb detonated almost directly above this building. Surprisingly, the skeletal remains are one of only a few buildings to survive the blast.

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