Hiroshima is a living monument to the devastating effects of the atomic bomb and the reconstructed city serves in its entirety as an eloquent testimony to the power of life over destruction. Where once there was nothing but ashes, there is now a thriving and dynamic modern city.

The Peace Memorial Park

Our first stop on a glorious afternoon, the best weather we’d had so far in Japan, was the Peace Memorial Park opposite our hotel where millions of visitors come each year to pay their respects.

The centre line of the Peace Park runs from the A Bomb dome to the Memorial Cenotaph, with the Peace Flame and a fountain also being on the same line. Around the park are other monuments, including the Peace Bell, Children’s Peace Monument, Cenotaph for Korean Victims, Memorial Tower to the Mobilised Students, and the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound.

The Children’s Peace Monument is a statue commemorating all of the children who died as a result of the bomb. It was inspired by Sadako Sasaki, a nine year old girl who died of leukemia as a result of the radiation. She folded over 1,000 paper cranes and the statue is of a girl with outstretched arms holding a folded paper crane aloft. The bell underneath has a paper crane as part of the clapper. Children from all over the world fold and send paper cranes and these are displayed close by.

The Peace Flame was lit in 1964 and will remain lit until all nuclear bombs are destroyed and the threat of nuclear war is no more.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

We visited the Peace Memorial Museum a couple of days later, when the weather wasn’t so nice. The museum leads you through a journey with different sections focusing on different themes. The first section showed Hiroshima prior to the bomb, the next section started with a projected map of the area showing an aerial view of the city, the bomb dropping and then an aerial view after the bomb, taken from US reconnaissance photographs. This was a very moving section with photographs of the devastation, testimonies from survivors, articles of charred clothing, burnt and melted rubble displayed to convey the impact of this single bomb. Around 70,000 people died in the initial blast.

The next section explained some of the background to the war; Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour in 1942 bringing the USA into the war, the initial UK research on splitting the atom which was shared with the Americans, whose Manhatten Project developed it into the fission (Hiroshima) and fusion (Nagasaki) bombs. It also discussed the context around the decision to drop the bombs and the alternative military strategies that were considered. It made me realise that I knew very little about the history of WWII in the Pacific region.

The final section of the museum described the post-war period; Russia developing their own bomb in 1958, the ensuing cold-war, the Cuban missile crisis, other countries like India and Pakistan becoming nuclear powers as a result of gaining access to nuclear weapons on the black market, the various attempts at non-proliferation treaties and calls for disarmament, right up to present-day tensions. The scary thought is that this was just a single relatively small atomic bomb. We now have hundreds of much more powerful nuclear missiles pointed at each other.

So was dropping the bombs justified?

I spent a lot of time over the following days thinking about whether, in the context of the war at the time, it was justified to drop either or both of the bombs. There is no doubt that they caused huge devastation, suffering and loss of life. On the other hand, Japan unconditionally surrendered within six days of the second bomb being dropped bringing the second world war to an end, so would the suffering have been greater had it continued?

I read up a bit on the war in the Pacific so will try to give a neutral account. There is loads more that can be read if you are interested.

Japan had been expanding its empire since the start of the 20th century, annexing Korea in 1910 and invading Manchuria in 1931. They then made a pact with Germany and Italy in 1940 (the Tripartite Pact) to enter the Second World War on the side of the Nazis. During this time the Western powers were focused on the First and Second World Wars in Europe so, until 1940, it seems little attention was paid to what Japan was up to in the Pacific. This changed when they launched a surprise attack on the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii in December 1941. At the same time they invaded Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. They then went on to attack Singapore, Burma, Indonesia and a number of other Pacific islands.

The Japanese campaigns were particularly brutal, including the killing of 200,000 – 300,000 Chinese civilians and POWs in the Nanjing Massacre (1937), the sexual slavery of 200,000+ “comfort women” from the invaded countries (80% from Korea and mainly teenagers) and using captured POWs and civilians as subjects on whom to test biological and chemical weapons. Its worth mentioning that the US was complicit in covering up the biological and chemical testing after the war and granting scientists immunity in exchange for their research. Neither side can claim the moral high ground.

Both sides targeted civilians, with UK cities being attacked by the Germans in the Blitz and later with V1 and V2 rockets and the Allies fire-bombing German and Japanese cities, particularly Dresden in February 1945 and Tokyo in March 1945. 25,000 – 35,000 civilians were estimated to have died in Dresden and 100,000 – 130,000 in Tokyo, in each case in a single night. The immediate Tokyo casualties were greater than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The fire bombings are controversial because Germany and Japan were already close to surrender at this point in the war.

The Germans surrendered on 8th May 1945 (VE day) and by this point the Japanese were also negotiating a surrender. The sticking point was whether the Emperor would be allowed to continue, with the Allies insisting he abdicate and the Japanese resisting this. One strategy being considered was for the Americans to withdraw from the Pacific leaving the Russians to broker a peace deal, but America was reluctant to allow Russia this much influence.

At the end of July 1945 the Allies (US President Truman, UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Russian Premier Joseph Stalin) held a meeting in Potsdam (Germany) which determined a number of issues including the fate of post-war Germany, which was to be divided into UK, US, French and Russian controlled zones, the establishment of the Nuremburg War Crimes trials, and the position of the Polish borders. They also issued a declaration calling on Japan to unconditionally surrender or face “prompt and utter devastation”. Leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities at this time with the same ultimatum and telling the citizens to evacuate.

Just before the Potsdam Conference, on July 16, 1945, the US conducted its first successful atomic bomb test in New Mexico. Truman and Churchill were aware of the success of the test at the start of the conference, but did not inform Stalin until later – although he already knew through spies. When the Japanese did not respond to the ultimatum to surrender Truman gave the order for atomic bombs to be used on Japanese cities and six potential targets were chosen. The decision to bomb Hiroshima on August 6th and Nagasaki on August 9th was based on weather conditions on the respective days.

So was the bombing justified? It certainly brought a quick surrender and end to the war, but the evidence is the war was ending anyway. There would have been a strong incentive for the Americans to use the bombs while they still had a war to justify using them in, to establish themselves as the world’s only nuclear power and to completely demoralise Japan, deterring any future aggression.

The message of peace and nuclear disarmament that the Hiroshima Peace Park embodies demonstrates a huge cultural shift from the brutal expansionist campaigns the Japanese waged in the first half of the 20th Century and I do wonder if this would have been the case if the war had been concluded using only conventional weapons? The subsequent period of cold war and the risk of mutually assured nuclear destruction, along with the establishment of NATO and the Warsaw Pact did result in a period of peace for the rest of the 20th Century, at least on a global stage.