Hiroshima remembers atomic bomb: 'Abolish the evil of nuclear weapons'
The Japanese city falls quiet as it remembers the moment 70 years ago that the Enola Gay dropped a bomb that obliterated tens of thousands of lives
Hiroshima has marked the 70th anniversary of the moment the city was flattened by an atomic bomb with prayers, a moment’s silence, and vows to redouble efforts to halt nuclear proliferation.
On a sweltering day in Hiroshima, tens of thousands of people lowered their heads and stood in silence at 8.15 am, the time the bomb was dropped on 6 August 1945, instantly killing 80,000 people and another 60,000 in the months that followed.
Doves were released into the morning sky and a Buddhist temple bell tolled as people across Japan marked the anniversary of the first nuclear attack in history.
On Sunday a similar event will be held to remember the second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki. More than 70,000 people died.
On Sunday a similar event will be held to remember the second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki. More than 70,000 people died.
Thursday’s ceremony was attended by 40,000 people, including representatives of more than 100 countries.
Among them was the US ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, and the US under-secretary for arms control, Rose Gottemoeller, the most senior US official sent from Washington to the annual memorial.
Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said that as the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack, Japan had an “important mission” to promote nuclear disarmament.
Abe said Japan would submit a new resolution to the UN general assembly this autumn calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. He would “encourage world leaders to get firsthand accounts of the tragic reality of atomic bombings” during next year’s G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in the city.
The mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, said that seven decades after the bombing, the proliferation of nuclear weapons posed a growing threat to global security.
“Our world still bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, and policymakers in the nuclear-armed states remain trapped in provincial thinking, repeating by word and deed their nuclear intimidation,” he said.
“We now know about the many incidents and accidents that have taken us to the brink of nuclear war or nuclear explosions. Today, we worry as well about nuclear terrorism.
“To coexist we must abolish the absolute evil and ultimate inhumanity that are nuclear weapons. Now is the time to start taking action.”
Seven decades ago, the countdown to the first nuclear attack in history began early when a US B-29 Superfortress bomber, escorted by two surveillance planes, took off from an airfield on the Pacific island of Tinian.
The Enola Gay, named after the mother of the plane’s pilot, Brig Gen Paul Tibbets, was carrying a 16kiloton atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy. Its target was Hiroshima, a port and major army base in western Japan, six hours’ flying time away.
As dawn broke in Hiroshima, its 340,000 residents were recovering from another sleepless night of false alarms after radar had picked up a succession of US bombers flying overhead on missions further south.
Soon after 7am local time, a US weather surveillance aircraft escorting the Enola Gay triggered yet another air raid alert. The plane left the area and the all clear was sounded at 7.31am. Its message to the Enola Gay’s crew: “Weather good, possible to drop bomb.”
Forty-four minutes later the Enola Gay released its payload. Below, people were preparing for a day at work, young children set out for school, and older ones set off to factories to help Japan’s faltering war effort.
The city, the site of a large military headquarters, had so far been spared the heavy conventional bombing that had destroyed much of Tokyo and Osaka. Hiroshima residents were beginning to suspect that their city was next.
The 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.
As many as 80,000 people died instantly in the blast or from the firestorms that raged moments later. The death toll would rise to about 140,000 by the end of 1945. The explosion, equal to between 12,000 and 15,000 tonnes of TNT, destroyed more than two-thirds of Hiroshima’s buildings across five sq miles.
Within 45 minutes, nuclear fallout mixed with ash and smoke from the firestorms to create a radioactive black rain that soaked survivors and did not abate until the fires began to burn themselves out in 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.
But wartime leaders did not receive confirmation that the city had been destroyed by a nuclear weapon until the next day, 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 8.15am Hiroshima remembered its dead. This year, as on every other anniversary, the names of survivors – the hibakusha – who died in the previous 12 months will be added to the peace park’s cenotaph. On the eve of the 70th anniversary, the total stood at 292,325.
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