Boss Lady had been telling me about all the great deals their local travel agents could get them and I was not having much luck with the internet, so I let them find me someplace to go during our latest break. By the time I had been told that we were even having a break it was too late to really plan anything anyway. I gave them a short list of nearby locations with Hiroshima and Ho Chi Minh at the top. With mere days to spare they came back to me with some disturbing prices. Hiroshima, they said, was not available and Ho Chi Minh was entirely too expensive. The best deals they could find were for places that were not even on my list. Where travel is concerned they like to dissuade me from places I want to go and encourage places they like. They love Malaysia and are always trying to get me to go to these romantic tropical islands. Not for any creepy reasons. They just prefer these places and would rather I go there than wherever I want to go. It really does not matter that I point out how much of a waste a romantic getaway is when you are single. Romance for one is not that romantic, and illegal in some places.
About four or five days before the break began I was told that Seoul was booked and confirmed. I was not all that enthusiastic about Seoul. I could not think of anything to see there besides the DMZ. But I figured since we only get two breaks a year (which turned out to be very incorrect) I had better go where I could when I could. The next day I was told that Hiroshima was now available and I told them to book it post haste. Not my exact words. During the next few days I was told that Hiroshima was booked but not confirmed. Then it was not booked. Then it was booked and confirmed, but not really. At one point the plane tickets were booked and confirmed but the hotel was in limbo. Dealing with people you barely understand who do not really understand you can be frustrating sometimes. During this process I was told that both the Hiroshima and Seoul packages only included two nights at a hotel, so I would need to find an additional hotel for the remaining time or pay a small fortune to add nights to whatever hotel in which I would be staying at whatever city to which I would be traveling. For some reason it is harder to find reasonable accommodations during the peak travel season at the last minute.
Although Hiroshima was at the top of my short list I was beginning to look forward to Seoul. Something about visiting the most heavily armed border in the world appealed to me. On the day before the break started I was given a plane ticket to Hiroshima. I was told that the package hotel may or may not be confirmed. I was hoping it would be since the hotel I found was unavailable during the two nights I would ideally be at the package hotel. Trying to find an available hotel room from the airport in the summer in Japan did not really seem like the best way to do things.
The flight to Hiroshima takes a little over two hours. The time from locking my front door to dumping my crap on the hotel bed was about 16 hours (15 with the time difference). The drive from my town to the nearest bus that goes to the airport is about 45 minutes. At the bus station I missed the bus because the person selling the tickets did not understand what I wanted. That is no surprise since I only had a note written very clearly in Chinese that said, “Please give me one ticket to the airport. I want to go to the International Airport, Terminal Two.” As often happens the clerk took one look at my foreign face and, instead of dealing with the situation for which I had prepared, phoned someone who speaks “English” to deal with me. This is always a big fat waste of time. More often than not the person on the phone speaks less English than the person with the phone. While talking to the person on the phone whom I did not understand and who did not understand me and waving my note and cash in the clerk’s face I watched my bus drive away. I finally got a ticket when I found a schedule on the wall and pointed to the next available time. Cash in hand I believe I said something to the effect of, “Just sell me a god damn ticket, monkey fucker.” While my note did nothing for the clerk, whom one would think knows Chinese, it did allow me to find the appropriate column on the schedule and point to what I wanted. As a woman once told me, when in doubt use your fingers.
Based on previous bus rides of equal distance I figured this one would take about four hours. There was a transfer to another bus at some point, so I added another hour because the odds are never in my favor that I will not be waiting around for a long time. At the transfer point I was surprised to find the next bus I wanted just sitting there waiting. The oddest part was that right there on the window of the bus was a sign in Chinese and English telling me that this was indeed the bus I wanted. I got on the second bus and settled in for a long ride. Since I had only been on the first bus for two hours I figured this next bus would take another two. I plugged my portable CD player into my head and got as comfortable as one can on a 30-year-old bus that is held together with crusted dirt and hope. In less than half an hour we were at the airport. This did not seem possible. I was now at the airport five hours before my flight was to leave and three hours before the check-in counter would even be open.
After becoming an expert on the layout of Terminal Two I waited at the check-in counter entirely too early. Although I was quite obviously the first person in line I was not the first person to check in. First come, first served is a completely alien concept to the Chinese. It is not only accepted that people will just waltz to the front of the line, but expected no matter how long the line may be or for how long people have been waiting. The cashiers and clerks seem completely disinterested in whatever may be going on beyond the three feet in front of them. Being Meigouran I made a sufficient enough stink to get what I wanted and I was off to deal with security and immigration.
Immigration officials can be amusing when one has an American passport. One such official was observant enough to note that I was neither departing from nor returning to my country of origin. When asked when I planned on returning to the US, I replied, “When that imposter is no longer in office.” I was referring to “Governor” Schwarzenegger, but it occurred to me not long after that I could just as easily have been describing the “President”. Fortunately I have no problems with the “Senators”. Discussing politics with Asians is sometimes difficult. They think democracy means the people choose the leaders.
The actual flight itself was uneventful, as all flights should be, but the landing was the hardest I have ever experienced. Even the flight attendants were surprised, and they are used to getting jerked around by pilots. We exited the aircraft outside and walked across the tarmac to the terminal, which was interesting. I can only speculate about what went wrong, but we survived. I soon found that, although it has international flights, Hiroshima is not an international airport and has no currency exchange. At immigration there were two lines for foreigners and about ten for Japanese citizens. They only have any immigration because, although not an international airport, they do have international flights. The lines for us foreigners were very long and, for some reason, this particular part of the airport had no air conditioning. The natives (as well as the visitors) were getting restless and I think at some point I might have said out loud, “I think it’s time we nuke them again.” I have found I am not a very patient person when I am hot, tired and getting proximally sodomized by the nimrod behind me. Once I got through immigration I had to wait in the baggage claim lines even though I only had my carry-on. Every airport in the world gives you the option of either waiting for your bag or moving on. Hiroshima does not. As organized and efficient as the Japanese are, this place was chaos.
The package hotel that may or may not have been booked was supposedly going to have a car waiting for me at the airport. At the arrival gate there were four men with signs in Japanese. Not being able to read Japanese I asked each of them in English if they were from the hotel. None of them knew what I was saying so I went back to each of them and simply said the name of the hotel and the name of the travel agency, which provided a special sticker to identify its customers in situations such as this, without success. I had no idea how long this mystery driver would wait for me to clear immigration and customs or even if he had been sent at all. I had the phone number for the travel agency, which was located in Bangkok, but not the hotel itself, and calling the hotel that I had booked would be rather useless since I knew they had no rooms available. I was about to take a taxi when I went back to one of the drivers with signs. Although he had no idea what I was talking about, something about him gave me the impression that this was the right guy. When I approached him the third time I pointed to his sign and pointed to myself, which I decided was a bad idea when he took me to his taxi. I wanted the free hotel ride, but I figured since I would probably have to take a taxi anyway it might as well be his. After an hour in his cab watching the meter read higher and higher (seemingly very high when you consider that US$50 equals about ¥5,400) I was thinking that maybe if this had not all been planned at the last minute I might have been better prepared.
We finally got into a city, although I had no idea what city, and passed some nice looking areas. He kept driving through to the docks. This was not really where I wanted to be, but eventually we turned a corner and I saw a very large, very nice looking hotel. The sign above the door told me that this was the right place, and since the driver never asked for any money and simply turned off the meter after we stopped, I assumed that maybe he was the right guy. The elaborate hotel gave me the feeling that my room was probably not booked and/or something was bound to go wrong. For what I was paying this simply could not be right.
The front desk staff spoke excellent English and were very polite. These were definitely not Chinese. Much to my surprise a room was waiting for me and there were absolutely no problems getting me into it. When I entered the elevator the voice of a British recording asked, “What floor, please?” Why it spoke English and not Japanese I have no idea, but I later found that its understanding of ghetto slang is quite limited, yo. When I opened the door to my room I decided that maybe putting up with all the last minute changes and travel agency crap was probably worth it. The very large picture window looked out onto Setonaikai and had the best scenery I have ever seen from a hotel window. I later saw a list of prices, and one night in my room was almost twice as much as I was paying for two nights (with “Western” breakfast) and airfare. The only bad part was that I was going to have to go to another hotel for the rest of my stay.
In 15something some guy began construction of a castle in an area he called Hiroshima (“wide island”) on the Otagawa Delta. It sits on an artificial island within a man-made lake that is on a natural island surrounded by a natural lake. The series of inner and outer motes was its best defense. The first outer mote was designed to be flooded in case of attack, and even if the enemy managed to think ahead and bring their scuba gear, the outer wall was impenetrable from the technology of the day. It served as the local castle for about 300 years until the Meiji Restoration. Throughout the many years of internal strife and clashes between warlords in Japan, Hiroshima Castle was never successfully invaded. It withstood the best its enemies had to offer. Until 6 August 1945 when a single bomb completely obliterated the entire structure in the blink of an eye. What stands today are the main castle tower and the cavalry compound, rebuilt after the war.
Registered in 1996 as a UN World Heritage Site.
At 8:15am on 6 August 1945 the deadliest weapon of mass destruction ever used against mankind was inflicted upon the civilian population of the culturally and historically rich city of Hiroshima. At 7:09am an American weather plane was spotted and the alarms were sounded. People quickly retreated to air raid shelters until it was determined that only a single plane at high altitude was approaching. The alert was lifted and people, including about 8,400 jr high school students, went about their routines. At about 8:13am an American B-29 bomber was spotted, but no air raid sirens were sounded since it was flying too high and was believed to be heading toward wherever the first plane went. Hiroshima had been spared air attacks up to this point and there was no reason to believe the US would begin attacking now, especially since conventional wisdom said that the war was all but over. At 8,500 meters according to US records and 9,600 meters according to Japanese records the Enola Gay, accompanied by two other planes, completed its mission and flew away.
A single bomb, affectionately referred to as “Little Boy” by its creators, detonated about 580 meters above the Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall, Shima Hospital and a very overcrowded jr high school. The Exhibition Hall (later called the A-Bomb Dome) was considered the most architecturally advanced and elegant building in the city. It had quickly become a beloved landmark. The war had interfered with summer breaks and most of the city’s jr and high school students were centralized into a few open schools. Students in higher levels of elementary school were fortunately on a break, while younger children were not.
The bomb housed 35 to 50 kilograms of uranium 235. When a single free neutron strikes the nucleus of an atom of fissile material, in this case uranium 235, it knocks two or three more neutrons free. Energy is released when those neutrons split off from the nucleus and the newly released neutrons strike other uranium 235 nuclei, splitting them as well and releasing even more energy and more neutrons. The instantaneous chain reaction of 1 kilogram of uranium 235 released an energy blast equivalent to 15,000 tons of the highest grade explosive known at the time. Half of that energy blast was released as a shock wave, about a third of the energy was released in the form of heat rays, and 15% as neutron and gamma radiation. At detonation the blast pressure 500 meters from the hypocenter was 19 tons per square meter. Wind blew at 1,000mph. The intense pressure forced air upward and a cloud of radioactive smoke reached the lower stratosphere, which spread it out horizontally, roughly resembling a mushroom. The blast alone instantly annihilated 85% of the city’s buildings and would have caused more damage if not for Japan’s higher than American standards for reinforced structures (because of earthquakes). The temperature at detonation was greater than 1,000,000 degrees Celsius, creating an enormous white-hot wall of fire. After about one second this massive fireball reached about 300 meters in diameter and remained visible for another 10 seconds. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki did not create such a firestorm. Surface temperatures exceeded 5,000 degrees Celsius and 2,000 degrees as much as 600 meters away. The intense heat caused thousands of fires that burned throughout the day and destroyed almost every structure in the city that the initial blast had not. Heat waves burned through the flesh and deep into tissue and organs of anyone exposed within a kilometer. At just over 3 kilometers it merely caused fatal surface burns. Anyone within 5 kilometers exposed to the heat waves that did not die immediately died within days. At 700 meters iron fences were melted and bubbled. At 900 meters stationary objects created permanent shadows on stone and cement. At the instant of detonation 60,000 to 80,000 people were killed. A little over thirty minutes after detonation black rain fell and was driven northwest by the violently unstable atmospheric conditions created by the nuclear fission. The highly radioactive rain covered an area of several hundred kilometers.
The next day the US War Department began a campaign of “morale deconstruction” against the people of Japan. In its entire history Japan had never been defeated by foreign invaders. Over the next two weeks millions of leaflets were dropped on the largest cities. Graphic stories and pictures were printed in half a million newspapers. Messages were sent by radio at 15 minute intervals. Dropping leaflets was not only an efficient way to distribute propaganda, but psychologically devastating. During the course of war people became increasingly indifferent to air raids and planes overhead, but after Hiroshima and Nagasaki a single American plane could terrify an entire city more than a fleet of fighter planes ever could.
In August 1945 the population of Hiroshima was about 350,000, although American and British reports state it as 255,000. An accurate census is unavailable since all government records for the prefecture were destroyed in the blast. By the end of December about 140,000 had died as a direct result of the bomb and another 135,000 were injured. In September 1945 American scientists declared that no residual radiation existed and that any future casualties as a result of radiation exposure would be minimal. By 1946 the effects of the radiation went beyond epidemic proportions. More than half of survivors burned from heat rays developed enormous and painful keloids. Those infected in-utero who were not stillborn had a substantially higher infant mortality rate and there were increased incidents of multiple birth defects, including mental retardation and microcephaly. Between 1949 and 1951 cases of leukemia exploded, directly proportional with exposed doses of radiation, with those exposed at a younger age at a much higher risk. By 1952 reports of thyroid cancer increased substantially, followed by lung and breast cancer in 1955, colon and gastric cancer in 1960, and multiple myeloma in 1975. As late as 1996 injuries and illness were still being discovered. A woman complaining of mysterious pains had a large piece of glass removed from her abdomen. The glass had trace amounts of radioactive material.
Aioibashi is on the right, where Honkawa and Motoyasugawa meet. [*]
The rubble upper right is now the Peace Memorial Park.
This was the largest hospital in Southern Japan.
At the time of the photograph this person was still alive
and, with almost no medicine available, probably in a good deal of pain.
The boy died in 1949. The girl died in 1965.
[*] US War Department, [+] Hiroshima Prefecture Historical Archives
The United States began experiments into the theoretical development of an atomic bomb as early as 1939, but did not launch its first serious effort, the Manhattan Project, until 1942. Inspired by the knowledge that Germany would probably have an atomic bomb within four years, the Manhattan Project was given an almost unlimited budget and carried on in utmost secrecy. By 1945 the United States tested the world’s first atomic weapon.
By the winter of 1944 the defeat of Japan was inevitable. The best options the United States had toward ending the war included a massive invasion, asking the Soviet Union to join the Pacific war, asking for Japan’s surrender, and using the atomic bomb. An invasion could have cost an estimated 30,000 American lives. The US government later told its people that they would have had to invade Tokyo (which they were not going to do) and that such an invasion would have cost 1 million American lives (which it would not have). Bringing in the Soviet Union would only mean that they would want a piece of the pie after the war was over. Their staggering casualty rates in Europe guaranteed them sizable spoils on that continent, and the US had spent a great deal of money and effort to keep communism out of China. Fat lot of good that did. The last thing they wanted was for Japan to go red. The War Department was well aware that Japan was willing to surrender, but on the condition that the Imperial system be sustained. The US wanted nothing short of unconditional surrender, which is a little ironic, in a terrifying way, considering that Japan did indeed keep its Emperor. Using the atomic bomb was always seen as the most viable option. If it were used to win the war, that might convince the American voters that its development was worth over $2 billion (in 1945 dollars) of their taxes. Showing the world that you have an atomic weapon and are willing to use it is also a practical way to keep the Soviets and any other potential Evil Empires in their place.
Other than ending the war and justifying its expense, using the bomb on a populated city would be an excellent way to examine its effects. Targets were chosen based more on their research potential than military or strategic importance, although a primary consideration was weather patterns. Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki and Niigata had large urban populations that were spread out far enough to examine the effects at varying distances. Air raids were prohibited in these cities to ensure that the target would be in pristine condition. It is widely believed that Hiroshima was the primary target because it had no Allied prisoner of war camp, although it did have a substantial Korean, Chinese and Filipino labor population, but those people are all Asian. It also had the benefit of resting between mountain ranges that could act as a natural barrier to hold in the destructive force and enable the study of this “radiation” the experts kept talking about.
"The use of the atomic bomb was not really needed to produce this result. With 9/10 of Japan’s shipping sunk or disabled, her air and sea forces crippled, her industries wrecked, and her people’s food supply shrinking fast, her collapse was already certain". - Winston Churchill
Dedicated in 1952, its register is updated every August 6th
to include those who have died of atomic bomb-related diseases each year.
Sadako Sasaki began folding over a thousand paper cranes
while she was in the hospital with leukemia.
She died in October 1955 at the age of 12.
This monument was dedicated in May 1958 to her
and all the children who were killed by the bomb.
The top statue carries a paper crane.
Of the 140,000 victims, at least 12,000 were children.
Formerly Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall.
The closest building to the hypocenter that was not completely demolished.
