Peace Park

At 8:15Am on August the 6th, 1945 the world's first nuclear attack was launched on Hiroshima. A single bomb, accompanied by three planes was dropped over its skies which parachuted gently to 580 metres above the city before detonating and obliterating a huge area of the city and large numbers of its inhabitants and thumping the rest with heat, radiation and destruction. By the end of the year after the acute effects of the radiation had subsided 140,000 people had been killed from a population of about 300,000. The epicentre of the bomb has remained clear of buildings and is now a park dedicated to peace and the disarmament of all nuclear weapons.

The view from the park includes the ruined building now known as the 'A Bomb Dome', the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and a flame, which will only be extinguished when the world's nuclear weapons have been had their threat removed. A huge Buddhist style bell hangs on a ledge in a pool of lotus plants, inviting people to ring it to affirm their own commitment to global peace, and a smaller bell, specially for children, hangs in a more modern sculpture, topped by a bronze statue of a girl, on her head a huge paper crane – this one makes special mention of Sadako, who thought her leukaemia could be starved off by folding 1000 origami cranes – and children from all over the world contribute chains of cranes to the memorial, so there is always a fresh supply of multi-coloured thousands. A mound under which the cremated remains of ten thousand unidentified victims wait to be returned to their families is in the far corner opposite the river and the A Bomb Dome.

What does sound like a very serious, mourning lay out is actually a place of peace and life. Visiting on a sunny weekday the park was full of school children of all ages in yellow hats and sailor suits. The older ones were more reverent, but the younger ones weren't as touched by the solemnity of the place and were just playing, as they would in any other park – but that didn't spoil the atmosphere – far from it in fact, it made it clear why we should be doing something about global peace and the kind of victims this bomb had.