Hiroshima is a fascinating city because despite the fact the U.S. wiped it off the map, and despite its terrible suffering, it has rebuilt itself as vibrant, friendly, and welcoming. No one other than Nagasaki understands what nuclear weapons really mean better than Hiroshima, and at a time of increasing uncertainty as these weapons proliferate to places like North Korea, Hiroshima is resolute that their existence cannot be justified and we must do whatever we can to eliminate them from the world.

We visited Hiroshima for the history – to see why happened as best we could and to see how the city has recovered. It’s often criticized for not being as interesting as Kyoto with its thousands of temples and Tokyo with its unending places to explore, but I think that’s an unfair characterization. It’s a genuinely nice place that I’d happily visit again – and I’d suggest you do as well.

Our first day was dedicated to the Memorial Peace Park, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, and the now iconic ruins known as Atomic Bomb Dome. The museum has done an excellent job of explaining history of nuclear weapons, the lead up to their creation, the evaluation of whether they should be used or not (from the U.S. perspective), the aftermath in Hiroshima as well as the arms race and subsequent nuclear weapons proliferation. The entryway contains several pre-bomb panoramas where if you weren’t careful to spot the signs in Japanese you might mistake Hiroshima for 1940s San Francisco or Los Angeles with its close wooden houses and streetcars. Immediately in the next room you see the scene after the bomb as you’re plunged into the horror of what happened. The entire landscape scraped away and left ruined. Regardless of your opinions on whether you think it was the right thing to do (which I don’t, nor do I care to debate) the experience is humbling. Most of us have read about the destructive scale of these kinds of weapons, but the museum was able to make you feel it. There are the pictures of course, but they’ve also included overviews and dioramas to help explain how wide and powerful the destruction was. The place where you stand and see this exhibit was near the hypocenter – but I quickly realized while looking at the map that even our hostel would have been destroyed as would the the train station a 25 min tram ride away.

The next room plays videos of survivors to capture and show the personal experiences of those who were there. Most videos are from years after the bombing but they remain haunting. One woman describes losing her two children and her husband. Another describes losing thirteen of her family members. These weren’t soldiers or politicians, they were everyday people. They describe starting their morning routines at the office or opening their local shop. They had no idea what was coming – there was no warning. They could have been you or me.  

It’s easy to get lost in the politics of the decision to drop the bomb. I’ve read Japan never would have surrendered and that experts believed it would cost half a million American lives and far more Japanese to have invaded. In contrast, I’ve also read Japan was already prepared to surrender and were working with the Soviet Union to do so. One thing that is certain however is that the US had other reasons to drop the bomb besides ending the war. The first was to curtail Soviet influence and to block a partition of Japan a la Germany and Korea. The second was US politicians felt we had to use the weapons to justify the great expense of their development to the American public. That is one of the more disturbing realizations I came away with after this visit. I also found it striking that several prominent scientists advocated both for and against the creation and use of atomic weapons. On the one hand Albert Einstein signed a letter along with other prominent physicists advocating research before the US was even involved in the war as they feared what Germany might do if they acquired nuclear weapons first. On the other hand several scientists worried dropping the bomb would shatter US credibility and would create an arms race – which came to fruition. The world got the Cold War and proxy wars for half a century as well as the distinct possibility that we could all (still) die at any moment given the whims of our leaders.

The Hiroshima museum above all makes this their salient point. Unless we work together to abolish these weapons this could all happen again. There are two clocks at the entrance to the museum. One shows the number of days since the last use of an atomic weapon (Nagasaki: 26,373 days) the other the number of days since the last test (North Korea: 50 days). It’s frightening to imagine how easily the peace we now take for granted could unravel.