Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

Today we headed to the A-bomb dome and the various peace monuments to the 1945 atrocity that killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima (and a further 80,000 in Nagasaki). The dome is one of the few remaining buildings from the bombing and a chilling reminder of mans inhumanity to man. It is a UNESCO world hertitage site.

We went into the museum and and what a grim picture it painted, it explained the history of the events that led to the bombing. The bombing itself was equivalent to 15000 tons of TNT and only 15% of the Uranium bomb was fully effective.

The museum has various artefacts of objects gelled together from the blast and interesting stories like a shard of glass that came to the surface from someones face 30 years after the explosion. After the bombing they said nothing would grow in Hiroshima for 75 years but that year plants began to grow. It was amazing that after the blast the people restored the electricity and train service within 3 days!

The chilling end to the tour shows the various countries that still have Nuclear war heads: Russia and the U.S hold 90% of the worlds nuclear weapons, while the UK have 150 warheads and India, Pakistan, Israel hold some and North Korea claim they Nuclear weapons. The U.S and Russia signed a treaty to limit the amount of warheads they can have a figure of around 2,000 each.....The U.S has an estimated 2,000 Nuclear warheads and yet they invade Iraq for "Weapons of Mass Destruction"..It beggars belief!

The Hiroshima bombing was certainly an unforgivable act and shows the need to completely abolish nuclear weapons before it happens again..NEVER FORGET