Hiroshima is a port city on the southwestern coast of Honshu in Japan which will forever be remembered as the city that, on August 6, 1945, was almost completely destroyed by the first atomic bomb to be dropped on a populated area. Today Hiroshima, with a population of over 1 million, is reborn & is the self-proclaimed “city of international peace and culture”.
Reflections of the Memorial Cenotaph in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on Nakajima island, the central monument to honour and console the souls of the victims of the A-bombing. After the bombing, the city of Hiroshima launched a campaign petitioning the national government for aid in the construction of a city of peace. The campaign resulted in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Reconstruction Law. The first special law of its kind, it stipulated that Hiroshima would be rebuilt to embody the striving of the human race for peace. It further stipulated that the area of Nakajima Island near the hypocenter be preserved in perpetuity as a symbol of peace and recommended the construction of what is now Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and its attendant facilities. The Peace Memorial Park includes Nakajima Island and the strip of land across the Motoyasu River where the A-bomb Dome stands. At the south entrance to the park stand three buildings lined up east to west. These three buildings, one of which houses the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, serve a variety of functions through which the city works to preserve the memory of the A-bomb and bring about world peace. The park also contains the A-bomb Dome, the Fountain of Prayer & the Flame of Peace, due to be extinguished when the last nuclear weapon on the planet is destroyed. Peace Memorial Park (
), Hiroshima, Japan. July 21st 2005 || From a July 2005 visit to Hiroshima, Japan
– Inscription on the coffin under the Memorial Cenotaph in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
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