One of the things that is hard to forget when travelling in Japan is how much of the country was destroyed during the Second World War. There are constant reminders as you travel around some of the destinations popular with tourists.
But when you get to Hiroshima you're dealing with something on a whole other level.
On August 6 1945 at 815 am a US B-29 bomber, known as Enola Gay, dropped the bomb over Hiroshima. The bomb detonated about 600 metres above the city and the destruction was truly devastating.
My guide had us dropped off right beside ground zero and we walked from there past the dome, through some of the parks and ended up in the museum.
To say it's sobering and sombre is to put it mildly. It's hard to articulate what it's like to walk through the area and to learn about how many people were killed and how they died. I might be capable of expressing in words how the experience affected me, but for now I'm finding it quite hard to put into words. The entire area is now devoted to peace and nuclear disarmament.
The atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a lot weaker than the nuclear warheads that many countries have at their disposal now. Having seen the utter destruction and misery that atomic bombs wrought on Hiroshima and its inhabitants it definitely reaffirms my long held views on nuclear weapons.
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