HIROSHIMA (広島)

Alfonso was here: in November 2008.
Total number of days: 1.
My Rating: 3/5 (I consider it a must, but would not repeat it). In fact, the second time I went to Japan I pass nearby from Miyajima and I did not repeat.

A little bit of history: in August 6, 1945, a nuclear bomb is dropped by the United States over Hiroshima. The official version: Hiroshima was “an important weapons depot and a shipping port in the center of an industrial urban area”. As it is explained in the museum, there is food for thought here: if it was such an important weapons depot and an interesting port, why it had not been bombed even once since the beginning of the war in December 1941? Why only 4 other cities throughout Japan had not been bombed, one of which was Nagasaki? Sometimes, US aircraft dropped pamphlets warning civilians that their city would be bombed so they had time to evacuate the city or go to the a shelter, but this time they did not warned … Obviously they had decided to drop the bomb even before the war had started and they needed to know how powerful it was. There were 255,000 people in the city; 80,000 died burned alive just like that, in minutes time. Another 20,000 in the next 24 hours. In 4 months 140,000 had died, and 200,000 in 5 years; 190,000 were civilians. In addition to the physical sequelae from burns, thousands of survivors developed radiation related diseases, most of them cancer over the next 20 years, and even today some of them have health problems related to exposure to radiation in their youth.

It is said that “those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it” and that “we learn from our mistakes”. Hiroshima is a place where, to your regret, you will learn a lot.