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it was one of the most consequential moments in the whole of world war ii at 8 15 a.m on august 6
1945 a single bomb fell from the clear blue skies over hiroshima 600 meters of oshima hospital in
the city center it detonated in a flash of blinding light unleashing a wave of heat hot
enough to incinerate people what happened over the following seconds minutes and hours remains
infamous the mushroom cloud rising above the city the fire storm visible for dozens of kilometers
the tens of thousands killed in an instant and the tens of thousands more who died of
radiation sickness yet while hiroshima today is mostly known for being the site of the world's
first nuclear attack there's more to its story than just a tale of unimaginable destruction
once a booming industrial and military town hiroshima rose from the ashes
transformed nowadays a city dedicated to promoting peace its phoenix-like revival is
surprising fascinating and inspiring all at once in this episode geographics is digging
boasts into the story of hiroshima's destruction and also its miraculous recovery
at the moment world war ii broke out hiroshima was one of japan's bigger cities a transport hub with
a strong military presence several industrial sites and a large population but of course
it didn't just spring into being like this a fully formed metropolis rising out of the ota
river instead hiroshima's story begins centuries before words like atom bomb had ever been dreamed
in an era known as the azuchi monoyama period this was an era when japan was unifying its disparate
provinces joining together in the centralized state that would mark the coming of the edo period
and out in japan's west terra moto mori was determined to build a castle a great warlord
murray had chosen the site on the otter that was then known as gokarsen or five villages but mori
was all like that's a lame name i'm going to call this place hiroshima
meaning wide island hiroshima effectively came into existence with maury's building project
lasting from 1589 to 1591. it was intended to replicate the grand castle towns of osaka
and kyoto the reed fields were emptied out workers and shopkeepers invited in by the
time mori died in the early edo period the new town was a fact of life a small urban settlement
organized around a grand wooden castle and that's pretty much how things stayed a bucolic slice of
bygone japan ticking by semi-undisturbed for centuries yet even this quiet town couldn't
escape the changes of the 19th century around 1820 the boundaries of hiroshima began to expand
gobbling up nearby villages within a couple of decades the population had almost hit 70 thousand
not much today but by mid-19th century japan standards it was big enough to make
it a significant town but it was with the meiji restoration that hiroshima's fortunes
really changed the return of imperial rule the restoration of japan triggered a full-blown
overhaul of japanese life as the country raced towards modernization industrialization and
westernization like usain bolt racing for another gold 1871 saw the end of old feudal domains
by 1889 teremoto mori's old stomping ground had become one of japan's first cities just as the
vital jina port was completed yet it wouldn't be the port that made hiroshima so important
well not entirely the year before it became a city the old castle town had welcomed a significant new
garrison of the imperial army this military connection would be both hiroshima's blessing
and its curse blessing because it made the city of national importance during the first sino-japanese
war the emperor temporarily moved the capital there to personally direct the war effort when
the russo-japanese war kicked off in 1904 its importance was again elevated new facilities
were constructed facilities requiring workers which meant jobs expansion and a booming economy
come the 1920s hiroshima had ballooned to a city housing 270 000 people one of the largest in japan
but the curse that came with this charmed status was already working its dark magic given its port
and military reputation hawks in the imperial government were constantly being all like
hiroshima awesome place let's build more army stuff there a rail network unfurled from the city
connecting it to the wide nation making hiroshima the focal point for sending troops abroad by the
time pearl harbor was bombed hiroshima was unlike nagasaki a city of immense strategic value for the
locals this was undoubtedly a source of pride their city was the nerve center of the entire
southern japanese defense force the second army headquarters had been established there munitions
were stored at the port soldiers shipped out from there each time a troop carrier left people
flooded the streets screaming and waving children begging to be held up to sea soon though the very
things that had made hiroshima great would lead to its downfall as august 1945 dawned it was on
a city that wasn't just a natural target but one filled with wooden structures homes workshops
industrial buildings all packed together and highly flammable it's this hiroshima that little
boy would fall onto that fateful day whistling down out of a clear sky one bright summer morning
and when it detonated it would be this hiroshima that vanished in the blink of an eye
at 8 15 a.m on august 6 1945 the u.s b-29 plane nola gay released a heavy metal cylinder high in
the air over hiroshima known as little boy the cylinder was in reality a 16 kilo ton bomb on
its sides were scrawled rude messages dear ajito messages that would never be read by anyone but
those who wrote them as the bomb fell toward earth the city of hiroshima went about its business
no one on the ground aware that their home was now seconds from annihilation roughly an hour earlier
an air raid alert had gone out as the enola gay was picked up by raid up by about 8 am though the
alert had been lifted as it became clear only three planes were incoming far too few surely
to cause any damage the result was a city once again working as normal people were in the streets
children were on the way to school and high above little boy was sailing towards its date with
history during the 43 seconds it fell the bomb drifted slightly off course away from the iowa
bridge where trams moved back and forth and toward the shema hospital at that time treating some
80 patients 80 people who'd never have time to realize what had happened little boy exploded 600
meters over the hospital within a fraction of a second the temperature on the ground had reached 4
000 degrees celsius the hospital was obliterated those inside winked out of existence a blast of
air shot from the detonation site superheated winds traveling at 414 metres a second barreling
through homes scattering trees like paper dolls so intense was the pressure from the blast that the
air pressure on the ground dropped so far so fast that people's eyeballs and internal organs popped
out of their bodies not that many mercifully had time to feel it in the space of time it took
a second hand on the watch to tick once up to 80 000 lives that ended unimaginable scores of people
incinerated torn apart or crushed under rubble and then there were the fires within 30 minutes
everything within a two kilometer radius of the hypocenter was burning firestorms ripped through
what remained of the city wood paper flesh everything that could burst into flames by the
time three hours had passed the billowing smoke from the fires had created a whole new cloud high
up in the atmosphere one several times larger than the mushroom cloud itself by then ninety
percent of the nearly 400 year old city was in ruins the discovery of hiroshima's annihilation
came slowly over several hours although there were ominous warning signs from the moment the
bomb went off first to note to something strange was an operator at the japanese broadcasting
company headquartered in tokyo perhaps a minute after little boy brought the apocalypse to this
corner of japan the operator logged that hiroshima station had gone dark nor was he the only person
to realize something was up telegraph operators too were wrestling with a sudden outage on the
hiroshima line then the railroad people started getting gobbled messages about trains unable to
enter the city due to some kind of explosion before half an hour had passed the japanese
general staff headquarters had discovered they couldn't raise anyone either since no fleet of
b-29s had been detected the top brass was sure there couldn't have been an attack at least not
on the scale required to knock out an entire city so they ordered a young man to fly the three hours
to hiroshima and report back what that young man saw would stay with him for the rest of his life
hiroshima was gone just gone and in its place was a scene from the end times a great swath
of devastation engulfed in billowing black smoke it was just like tokyo had looked after the fire
bombing in march that year yet the tokyo firestorm had only been possible thanks to a fleet of nearly
280 planes how could the radar network have missed such a swarm approaching hiroshima the answer came
16 hours after detonation as president harry truman announced the deployment of the world's
first atomic weapon yet even at this early stage on the ground something incredible was
happening from utter annihilation the city of hiroshima was already starting to rebuild
as the sun rose above hiroshima on august 7 1945 it was above a city that seemed to have been
permanently destroyed all night long firestorms had raged forcing survivors to huddle in parks
to escape the flames out of mid the ruins were over 80 000 bodies 80 000 bodies including some
of the most important people who were needed for the city to function the mayor was dead along with
thousands of civil servants all but two of the city's 16 hospitals have been flattened the 298
doctors hiroshima once boasted had been reduced to just 28. over 1 650 nurses have been killed
most of the city's teachers were dead as were most of the firefighters the huge water systems
used by the fire department had been rendered unusable their insights filled with the corpses
of people who jumped in fleeing the firestorm only to be bald alive on top of that most of the city's
housing stock had been flattened the survivors were homeless desperately in need of food water
and in many cases medical treatment in short hiroshima was as dead as a city could be dead in a
way only places like dresden had ever experienced it already though there were faint signs that it
was returning to life that morning august the 7th the 80 survivors of the municipal governments a
thousand employees reported for duty stepping into the void left in civic life what faced them was a
task beyond daunting the effective rebuilding of a city that had vanished overnight sinking
like atlantis into a sea of fire what they and the volunteers who streamed in achieved would be
nothing short of miraculous that same day august the 7th power was restored around the aegean area
and the local rail line returned to operation come august the 8th a suburban service had been
restarted between yokogawa and hiroshima main station 24 hours later the first trams were
running again shuddering through a landscape as featureless as the surface of the moon
the same day the railways resumed surviving employees gathered in the concrete shell of
the bank of japan less than 48 hours earlier 30 of their colleagues had died at that exact spot
now though they went about re-establishing banking services in the ruins the tellers working under
open sky with umbrellas in hand in case it rained by august 9 the same day nagasaki vanished in a
puff of atomic smoke tens of thousands of volunteers had reached hiroshima coming from
as far afield as yamaguchi slowly together they worked to restore the city it was a hard task not
to mention one that was absolutely soul crushing streets and rivers were packed with corpses
worse survivors were beginning to show the first signs of radiation sickness a side effect of the
bombing that would raise the death toll as high as 141 000 by november and that could have just
been the beginning shortly after the bombing manhattan project member dr harold jacobson
told the washington post that radiation meant hiroshima would be uninhabitable for the next 70
years still those who lived there tried to rebuild perhaps it was all they could do and remarkably
it worked four days after little boy brought unimaginable death to the city the water pumps
were operational again before long a third of surviving homes had power on august 14th the day
before hirohito announced japan's unconditional surrender the first phone lines resumed operation
this despite every single employee of the telephone exchange dying in the detonation nor
was it just hiroshima's humans rose from the ashes that autumn the first weeds were spotted growing
amid the rubble signs of life dr harold jacobson had insisted would be impossible by the following
summer camphor trees and oleanders would be blooming again today the official tree and flower
of hiroshima city by then though the survivors would have already experienced another tragedy
on september 17 1945 typhoon makarozaki hit the already devastated hiroshima causing untold damage
streets were flooded makeshift hospitals destroyed another 2 000 people killed yet
by now the resurrection of hiroshima couldn't be stopped a force was at work one almost as
powerful as the wrenching apart of atoms that had destroyed the city a force called hope
in 1946 hiroshima's chogoku shimbun newspaper launched a competition asking its readers to dream
up a vision for the rebuilt city now a year on for the blast the real horrors of august the 6th
had at last disappeared oh sure the city was still in ruins but the bodies and the flies that gorged
on them had long since been cleared away the rubble had been swept aside the supply crisis had
also eased helped by the influx of foreign troops following japan's surrender bringing with them
food and water for all the undeniable progress though hiroshima was still half dead the debris
may have been cleared out of the hypo center but in their place now stood a shanty town of 10 000
wooden homes in semi-squalid conditions that and the still raw trauma of the bomb may help explain
the newspaper's winning entry sankichi togi had been three kilometers from shima hospital when
the enola gay released its payload a per by trade the horrors of the bomb had converted him into
a peace activist and it was this that inspired his vision for the rebuilt hiroshima rather than
just being a renewed city togi envisioned a place dedicated to peace with a memorial and a museum
and a conference hall where people could gather in the name of world without war above all togi felt
that this new city should be filled with flowers and trees although the competition was unofficial
the city government was seriously in togi's plans but what could they do the city's finances were as
devastated as the rest of it on top of that most of the land near the center was technically still
owned by the military for a while it seemed like doggy's dream would remain just that a beautiful
dream of a city salvaged from the ruins but it became reality or near enough is entirely thanks
to hiroshima's residents from 1946 on survivors locals and those from nearby towns began what
we now call a pressure campaign one dedicated to renewing their devastated home it took three
years but in 1949 the national government finally listened the peace memorial city construction law
was passed elevating hiroshima to special status and enshrining in law toga's idea
that the city should be a vast peace memorial shortly after the military agreed to give up
its land claims new funding was earmarked slowly surely the rebuilding of the city got underway
but sankichi dogi wouldn't live to see it just 28 when the bomb exploded togi would be dead by 36
passing away in a sanatorium in march of 1953 he'd leave behind a few works of poetry and a legacy as
a guiding light for his city as it embarked on the makeover of a lifetime and the funds were
now flooding in for such a transformation as japan entered the 1950s the country's post-war
economic miracle got underway construction boomed jobs were plenty the cities expanded including
hiroshima which soon returned to its pre-bomb population yet even in this age of miracles
the resurrection of hiroshima wouldn't be a done deal in fact it would soon turn out that creating
a living memorial would be far more difficult and controversial than anyone could have guessed
a unesco world heritage site hiroshima's a bomb dome stands quietly alongside a stretch
of riverside where locals like to stroll in spring originally the hiroshima prefectural industrial
promotion hall it was one of the few concrete buildings in the city when little boy exploded
reducing it to a mere shell and killing everyone inside these days its ruined dome is a symbol of
peace a quiet thought-provoking reminder of the destructive power that humankind can unleash
and there's a parallel universe close to ours where this icon never existed for many of
those in charge of rebuilding hiroshima the only option for dealing with the city's concrete ruins
was to tear them down from the moment plans for making a memorial were approved a fight erupted
over what to do with the visible evidence of the bombing on one side you had people who argued that
the ruins had to be preserved that to sweep them away was tantamount to sweeping away the memory
of the event itself on the other with those who thought sweeping memories away sounded like a
great idea who were sick of walking through their rebuilding city and coming face to face with some
re-traumatizing reminder of its darkest day on every corner in many ways the debate echoed those
raging in europe as millions of people surveyed ruins and thought well now what in dresden warsaw
great rebuilding works would slowly recreate lost historic centers trying to return chunks of these
cities back to their pre-war grandeur in coventry the ruins of a bombed-out cathedral would be left
to stand even as the rest of the damaged city was repaired it took until the mid-1960s to reach an
agreement but that decade japanese officials finally decided a handful of hiroshima's
bomb-damaged buildings would be officially preserved including the a-bomb dome it was a
dramatic time for the rapidly regenerating city at the tokyo olympics in 1964 19 year old yoshinori
sakai had been the final athlete to carry the olympic torch running up to the top of the podium
with it clutched in his hands a sign of japan's renewed vitality in more ways than one sakai
had been born in hiroshima on august 6 1945 his first experience of this world had been one of
fire and destruction now here he was as vital and alive as any of the american athletes for
those watching the broadcast in hiroshima it was like watching the city's spirit be reborn all over
again not that the lingering controversies ended with the dome's preservation one sadly
little reported tale of hiroshima's rebuilding is how the makeshift slums that had sprung up after
the bombing were cleared to make room for the new memorials since many of those living in them were
korean forced laborers the authorities made no contingency plans those evicted were forced to
build themselves a new slum on the riverbanks one without electricity or running water in the years
before they were re-housed in the 1970s these slum dwellers experienced numerous terrible fires
which gutted their homes a faint reminder of the dreadful firestorms that raged that long ago day
yet for all its controversies the city did rebuild and these days it's hard to imagine
it looking any different today hiroshima is a city that in many ways has thrown off its past
home to over a million people with an additional million in the wider metro area modern hiroshima
is a pleasant place a city of open space is a greenery a contemporary japanese metropolis where
people live blissfully ordinary lives if you were to visit there with no knowledge of the past you
would never realize that this was the site of world war ii's worst bombings never realize the
pain and anguish so many here once suffered the only clues are the memorial park with its quiet
dignity and the names you see everywhere so many roads parks and gateways all with
names somehow incorporating the word peace as toge once dreamed this is now a city of peace
a beacon in a world forever grappling with the evil of war the story of the bombing may forever
be a part of hiroshima's tale a sad chapter that all most people know of it but as we've
hopefully shown today there's another story too one that's equally fascinating the story of how
one japanese city came back from the dead and in doing so became a model for the entire world
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