広島市, 日本
Hiroshima, Japan
Feburary 5th 2023
The world's first atomic weapon was dropped in Hiroshima on August 6th 1945 next to this building here. I stood under the location where it exploded in the sky, where it killed over 100,000 people and changed the course of history, perhaps more so than any other action before it.
The atomic bomb dome is the only remaining building that weathered the nuclear bomb and was not demolished afterwards. Kept as a reminder, peace gardens and several memorials are collected around it.
Whether or not it was a moral action was something I had never really addressed before. Going to school in the UK, you are so overstuffed with patriotic seal and propaganda about World War II that there is no room for nuance, it is simply the Allied heroes vs the evil Nazis. But now that I have been forced to think about it, I do not see how it could be anything but a deplorable act, one of the worst war crimes ever committed. If Nazi Germany dropped a nuclear weapon on France and then subsequently lost the war, there is no question that it would have be treated as a crime against humanity. Morality really is decided by the winner I guess.
