Up From Ground Zero: Hiroshima
Photographs by Jodi Cobb
Text by Ted Gup
A single bomb from a U.S. B-29 devastated Hiroshima in 1945, turning the city into a scattering of ruined concrete, killing 80,000 people immediately and another 60,000 before the year ended. It would not be an exaggeration to say that over 50 years later, Hiroshima is not one city but two: one that can never forget and the other that can never know. For an entire generation of Japanese and Americans the circumstances remote. Some find it hard to imagine how the decision to bomb Hiroshima could have been made. But the world was at war, and the A-bomb was said to be a way to hasten an end to the conflict, thereby saving the lives of American servicemen who might otherwise have been doomed in a protracted invasion of the Japanese homeland. News of the war’s end nine days after the bombing of Hiroshima brought celebration and relief.
Through the years that relief has turned to unease as the decision to drop the bomb has been revisited and debated over and over. Amidst the questions, Hiroshima has rebuilt, becoming a city almost devoid of physical scars but with a deep and abiding sorrow.
NGM 1995/08