After 71 Years, Hiroshima's Message Of Peace Faces New Challenge

Inside the dimly lit exhibit halls of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum amidst piles of rubble stand wax figures of burnt human beings with skin melting off their arms. Waxy keloid scars lie imprisoned in glass cases along the walls like flesh-colored leeches. Many displays contain singed children’s uniforms, each belonging to one of the roughly 1,400 primary school students who perished on August 6, 1945.

At 8:15 am that day, an American B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The warhead exploded with a force equivalent to 15 kilotons of TNT, creating surface temperatures at the hypocenter that rivaled the sun. Approximately 80,000 people—30 percent of the city’s population—died from the blast and subsequent firestorm. Roughly 60,000 more would die from bomb-related health complications.