Hiroshima

• 1. Introduction

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  Hiroshima stands today as the largest city in Japan's Chugoku region, home to nearly 1.2 million people, a professional symphony orchestra, and one of the busiest light-rail networks in the country. But at 8:15 in the morning on the 6th of August, 1945, the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped a nuclear weapon called Little Boy over the city, and at least 70,000 people died in the first moments of the blast. Fewer than 10% of those casualties were military. By the end of that year, the total death toll had climbed to somewhere between 90,000 and 140,000. About 70% of the city's buildings were destroyed, and another 7% were severely damaged. How did this city reach that moment? And how, in the decades that followed, did Hiroshima rebuild itself into a symbol recognized around the world?

• 2. Founded on a Delta

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  Mori Terumoto, one of the most powerful warlords of the late 16th century, chose the delta coastline of the Seto Inland Sea as the site for his new castle town in 1589. The name he gave it, Hiroshima, means "wide island" in Japanese. Hiroshima Castle went up quickly, and by 1593 Terumoto had moved in. Before the castle town existed, the area had been a small fishing village whose trade was tied to a Zen Buddhist temple called Mitaki-dera, a relationship that dated back to the 12th century.

  Terumoto's hold on the city did not last long. He backed the losing side at the Battle of Sekigahara, and the victor, Tokugawa Ieyasu, stripped him of Hiroshima and most of his other lands. The city passed to a daimyo named Masanori Fukushima, who had supported Tokugawa. Then, from 1619 until 1871, Hiroshima was ruled by the Asano clan, a span of more than two centuries that gave the city a long, stable identity as a castle seat. The abolition of the Han system in 1871 ended that era and made Hiroshima the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, pointing the city toward a very different future.

• 3. Military Heart of an Empire

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  Ujina Harbor, constructed through the efforts of Governor Sadaaki Senda in the 1880s, turned Hiroshima into a major port and, crucially, a military gateway. When the San'yo Railway reached the city in 1894, a rail line connecting the main station directly to the harbor was built specifically to move troops and supplies during the First Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese government itself temporarily relocated to Hiroshima during that conflict, and Emperor Meiji kept his headquarters at Hiroshima Castle from the 15th of September, 1894, to the 27th of April, 1895. The first peace talks between Chinese and Japanese representatives to end that war were held in Hiroshima, from the 1st to the 4th of February, 1895.

  Industrialization followed the military build-up. Cotton mills and other industrial plants opened in the late 19th century. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904 drove further factory development as the city produced military supplies. The building that would one day become the most recognizable ruin on earth, the Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall, was constructed in 1915 as a trade and product showcase. By the Second World War, the Second General Army, the Chugoku Regional Army, and the Army Marine Headquarters were all based in Hiroshima, with large depots of military supplies spread across the city.

• 4. Little Boy

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  Paul Tibbets, born the 23rd of February, 1915, piloted the Enola Gay over Hiroshima on the morning of the 6th of August, 1945. The bomb his crew released was a nuclear weapon designated Little Boy. The population before the bombing was around 345,000. Among those who died in the immediate blast were thousands of Korean slave laborers.

  Children aged 11 to 14 had been mobilized before the attack to demolish houses and create firebreaks, a measure taken against potential firebombings, though Hiroshima had been spared the air raids that devastated Tokyo and other Japanese cities. Streetcar service, which had run since 1912, was interrupted by the bomb. It was restored as quickly as possible: service between Koi, also known as Nishi Hiroshima, and Tenma-cho restarted just three days after the attack.

  In the aftermath, American occupation authorities censored reporting on the bombing's effects. Film footage shot by Japanese cameramen in Hiroshima was confiscated. Casualty statistics were suppressed. The journalist John Hersey wrote a long account of the bombing for The New Yorker, published on the 31st of August, 1946, and the piece filled the entire issue of the magazine. It reached Tokyo in English by at least January 1947. The Japanese translation did not appear until 1949, the same year the occupation ended its censorship with the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco.

• 5. Rebuilding and Remembering

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  The bombing was not the last catastrophe Hiroshima faced that year. On the 17th of September, 1945, the Makurazaki Typhoon struck the city. Hiroshima Prefecture suffered more than 3,000 deaths and injuries, accounting for roughly half the typhoon's national toll. More than half the bridges in the city were destroyed.

  The national government responded to the city's devastation with concrete support. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law, passed in 1949, provided financial assistance for reconstruction and transferred land previously used by the Imperial military to the city. That same year, a design was selected for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, and Mayor Shinzo Hamai, who lived from 1905 to 1968, persuaded the Japanese parliament to proclaim Hiroshima a City of Peace. The ruined shell of the former Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, the closest surviving building to the bomb's detonation point, was preserved rather than demolished. Designated the Genbaku Dome, or Atomic Dome, it became part of the Peace Memorial Park. In 1996 the park was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

  The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum opened in 1955 inside the park. The historic castle was rebuilt in 1958. By 1955, the city's population had climbed back to its pre-war levels after dropping to 137,197 immediately after the bombing. The oleander became the city's official flower because it was the first plant to bloom again after the 1945 explosion. On the 27th of May, 2016, Barack Obama became the first sitting United States president to visit Hiroshima since the atomic bombing.

• 6. A Living City

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  Hiroshima's streetcar network, nicknamed Hiroden, illustrates something resilient about the city's character. Two specific cars, numbered 651 and 652, survived the atomic blast and still run today. When Kyoto and Fukuoka discontinued their trolley systems, Hiroshima purchased their vehicles at discounted prices. By 2011, the city operated 298 streetcars, more than any other city in Japan. The service that resumed three days after the bomb now carries passengers through a metropolitan area with a GDP, as measured in 2010, of US$61.3 billion.

  Mazda Motor Corporation is among the major industrial names based in the Hiroshima area, and the city's baseball club, Hiroshima Toyo Carp, plays at a stadium named after the automaker. The Carp won the Japan Series in 1979, 1980, and 1984, and captured the Central League title in 2016, 2017, and 2018. The football club Sanfrecce Hiroshima, which traces its roots to Toyo Kogyo Soccer Club and its five Japan Soccer League titles between 1965 and 1970, won the J.League in 2012, 2013, and 2015. The city hosted the 1994 Asian Games and the 49th annual G7 summit in May 2023. The Hiroshima International Animation Festival ran biennially from 1985 until 2020, and the city's professional symphony orchestra has performed at Wel City Hiroshima since 1963.