The East York-Riverdale Mirror

Like many Westerners who visit Japan, I had included Hiroshima on my itinerary primarily because of the events that took place at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945 when an atomic bomb was deliberately exploded over the city.

Most people know the story of the Manhattan Project, how the Atomic bomb was developed and dropped by the crew of the American B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay and that thousands of people died as a result.

However, the dry facts of history become very different when one stands on the spot where events took place trying to understand the experiences of those who were actually there.

Metropolitan Hiroshima today is a bustling modern city that could pass for many others in Japan, except for one thing, and that is the remains of the Hiroshima Prefecture Industrial Promotion Hall at the epicenter of the atomic blast.

More commonly called the A-Bomb Dome, the shattered and twisted building stands as a memorial to the 70,000 people who died immediately when the city was first super-irradiated and then blasted with a 4000 C heat wave, all in a matter of one second.

What makes those numbers even more tragic is that on that summer day thousands of school children were in Hiroshima doing volunteer work and were out in the open as air raid warnings had been called off.

Worse was that the intended target of the bomb was not the city's military base, but the residential core of the city, which resulted in thousands coming out of their homes to watch the bomb float down by parachute to its detonation point.

That moment of detonation is particularly relevant to all Canadians as the Uranium-235 used in that atomic bomb came from our federal government by way of the Crown Corporation Eldorado Nuclear, who processed ore from Canadian and Congolese mines in Port Hope, Ont.

Nowhere at the Atomic Dome, nor in the adjoining Peace Park, do the people of Japan deny their own responsibility for starting the War of the Pacific and their role in the historical events that contributed to the decisions to drop the bomb. All that is asked of us by the people of Japan and the citizens of Hiroshima is that we remember the estimated 200,000 who eventually died from the effects of the A-bomb and make certain that such an event never happens again.

Three days after the bomb was dropped, the city of Hiroshima began to rebuild and you can see the results stretched out in all directions from the blasts epicenter in a vibrant and modern city of nearly two million people.

As I stood by the Atomic Bomb Dome, I watched a group of kindergarten children led by their teachers walk past and saw the true memorial in its most human form.