Hiroshima was not always a city of peace, but a fortress built on the delta of the Ota River in 1589 by the warlord Mori Terumoto. The name itself, meaning wide island, described the geography of the Seto Inland Sea where the city was established. For centuries, it served as a strategic military hub, hosting the headquarters of the Second General Army and the Chugoku Regional Army during the imperial era. The city played a significant role in the First Sino-Japanese War, where Emperor Meiji maintained his headquarters at Hiroshima Castle from the 15th of September 1894, to the 27th of April 1895. It was here that the first round of talks between Chinese and Japanese representatives to end the war took place from February 1 to 4, 1895. The city grew from a small fishing village into a major urban center, but its history was always intertwined with the machinery of war.
The Morning The World Changed
On Monday, the 6th of August 1945, at 8:15 a.m., the American Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the Enola Gay, flown by Paul Tibbets, dropped the nuclear weapon Little Boy on the city. The attack directly killed at least 70,000 people, including thousands of Korean slave laborers, and fewer than 10% of the casualties were military. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought the total number of deaths to between 90,000 and 140,000. The population before the bombing was around 345,000, and about 70% of the city's buildings were destroyed, with another 7% severely damaged. The public release of film footage of the city following the attack was restricted during the occupation of Japan, and much of this information was censored until the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, serves as a memorial of the bombing, preserving the state of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, which permanently remains the only structure still standing.The Flower That Bloomed From Ash
Oleander, known as Nerium, is the official flower of the city of Hiroshima because it was the first to bloom again after the explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945. This biological resilience became a powerful symbol for the city's recovery. The city was struck by the Makurazaki Typhoon, also known as Typhoon Ida, on the 17th of September 1945, which caused more than 3,000 deaths and injuries in Hiroshima Prefecture, about half the national total. More than half the bridges in the city were destroyed, along with heavy damage to roads and railroads, further devastating the city. From 1945 to 1952, Hiroshima came under occupation from the British Empire. The city was rebuilt after the war, with help from the national government through the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law passed in 1949. It provided financial assistance for reconstruction, along with land donated that was previously owned by the national government and used by the Imperial military.