Remembering Hiroshima

65th Hiroshima memorial heralds new world order.

One of the most popular pieces on display at Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Museum is a wristwatch; its hands frozen at 8:15, the exact moment in 1945 that an American B-29 bomber dropped its atomic payload over the city.

On August 6, 1945– 64 years ago today– the USA B-29 bomber, known as the Enola Gay, dropped the world’s first atom bomb, called “Little Boy,” over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. As a result of the bomb:

• 140,000 people were killed or died within an year from the effects of the blast and radiation;
• 35,000 people were injured;
• 62,000 buildings (nearly 70% of all buildings in the city) were destroyed.

Three days later, on August 9, 1945, the “Fat Man” atom bomb was dropped over Nagasaki, killing another 80,000 people. On August 15, 1945, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers, ending the Pacific War and therefore World War II.

Survivor Masahiro Kunishige has long felt that progress in creating a world free of nuclear weapons was, much like the watch, halted.

That is why he, unlike other survivors, known in Japan as the Hibukasha, chose for years not to speak about his personal ordeal.

"The Hibukasha's campaign to denuclearise lacked momentum," he says. "But now the US president has expressed concerns and goals. That has changed everything."

Turning point

For Kunishige, Barack Obama's pledge, made last spring, to work to rid the world of its nuclear weapons stockpile was a turning point. It convinced Kunishige, that he too should start publicly speaking out.

"I used to be filled with bitterness, and wanted retribution ... I now believe working to rid the world of nuclear weapons is the best way to find that retribution," he says.

Kunishige was just 14 years old when the bomb was dropped. He and his classmates were tending to a wheat field when they were hit by a white flash. Those who awoke found that much of their flesh had literally melted away.

"We had to scrape off what remained. It felt like the top of a can, slicing through your flesh. It was so painful."

As Kunishige walks the grounds of the 30-acre Peace Memorial park, he thinks less of the past; his mood is one of determined optimism.

For the first time, the US and its second world war allies, France and Britain, will send delegations to the annual memorial.

"It is a small, but significant step forward," says Kunishige.

The arguments in the US against attending have often been that it is "politically incorrect" for allied nations who supported the bombings to be there. More hawkish defenders have insisted that visiting would lead people to forget that Japan was the aggressor, not the victim, in that war.

For image-conscious political strategists, the strongest argument for not having a presence has always been the quandary of contradiction; how to attend a ceremony dedicated to eliminating nuclear weapons, when ones nation itself continues to carry them.

Obama's pledge not only addressed such a concern, but has given this ceremony, Kunishige believes, greater meaning.

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