Hiroshima Remembers The Day It Was Bombed

On this day, 70 years ago, the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The city is silent. Doves have been released signifying peace during the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony honouring the 70th anniversary of the bombing, according to theguardian.

On Thursday, tens of thousands gathered to mark the day.

It was attended by Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe and foreign delegates, among the thousands who came to the Peace Memorial Park to experience a moment of silence at 8:15 a.m., 2315 GMT, when the western Japanese city went up in flames.

Every year, the survivors, also called the hibakusha , who passed away last year, will be added to the peace park's cenotaph. On the eve of the 70th anniversary, the total stood at 292,325.

Mayor Kazumi Matsui said that nuclear weapons were "absolute evil" and we should put a stop to them. "To coexist we must abolish the absolute evil and ultimate inhumanity that are nuclear weapons. Now is the time to start taking action," he said.

However, there is no sign of remorse from the source of the bombing. As a commentator puts it in salon: "I'm wondering if we've come even one step closer to a moral reckoning with our status as the world's only country to use atomic weapons to slaughter human beings. Will an American president ever offer a formal apology? Will our country ever regret the dropping of "Little Boy" and "Fat Man," those two bombs that burned hotter than the sun? Will it absorb the way they instantly vaporized thousands of victims, incinerated tens of thousands more, and created unimaginably powerful shockwaves and firestorms that ravaged everything for miles beyond ground zero? Will it finally come to grips with the "black rain" that spread radiation and killed even more people - slowly and painfully - leading in the end to a death toll for the two cities conservatively estimated at more than 250,000?"

At Hiroshima, while honouring the dead, more than 100 countries, including the US ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, had sent their representatives. They stood in the shadow of what had been the prefectural industrial promotion hall. Today it is called the atomic bomb dome. They listened to statements from survivors and children.

Remembering the bombing 70 years ago, Junko Morimoto explains to abc: "My brother had glass pieces struck all over his body. My sisters and I did our best at that time to take the pieces out for him, but I still remember my brother telling me a little before he passed away "You know what Junko, I can still feel these tiny pieces under the skin on my back. They're still there." He passed away at the age of 73 due to cancer. And this cancer could be due to the radiation of the bomb."

In the morning of August 6, 70 years ago, a US B-29 Superfortress bomber, escorted by two surveillance planes, began from an airfield on the Pacific island of Tinian.

It was an Enola Gay, the name given after the mother of the plane's pilot, Brig Gen Paul Tibbets. He was carrying a 16-kiloton atomic bomb, with the strange nickname of Little Boy. They aimed it at Hiroshima, a port and major army base in western Japan, just six hours' away.

Early morning, its 340,000 residents were just recovering from a "sleepless night of false alarms after their radar picked up a succession of US bombers" flying overhead on missions headed south.

After 7 a.m. a US weather surveillance aircraft set off another air raid alert. The plane zoomed off and an all clear was sounded at 7.31 a.m.

A message was sent to the Enola Gay's crew: "Weather good, possible to drop bomb."

Just 44 minutes later, the Enola Gay released its payload.

Hiroshima was the site of its military headquarters, where there were no heavy conventional bombs that had destroyed large areas of Tokyo and Osaka.

But now, the N-bomb "exploded 580 metres (2,000ft) above a T-shaped bridge at the junction of the Honkawa and Motoyasu rivers, unleashing a blinding flash followed by a deafening boom."

It killed 70,000 people instantly, which would go upto 140,000 by the end of 1945.

In just 45 minutes, there was a nuclear fallout mixed with ash and smoke, creating a radioactive black rain that soaked everyone till the evening.

As people staggered among the dead and dying in search of water and medical treatment, news began to spread to the capital, Tokyo, that something unspeakable had occurred in Hiroshima.

However, it was only on the following day that the news of the atomic bomb was given, when the US president, Harry S Truman, said: "Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. It is an atomic bomb."

At 8.15 a.m. Hiroshima remembered its dead.