Japan is full of beautiful gardens, ancient shrines and buildings and incredible food and cultural experiences. It's also the country that suffered the first use of the atomic bomb in war, when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at 8:15am on August 6th,1945.
It was a very powerful and haunting experience to stand where something so horrific had happened and to try to comprehend it all.
Here are some pictures including a building that remained partly standing and was left exactly as it was.
Other photos inside a museum on the site show some of the objects that were damaged by the blast.
This is the building as it looked before the explosion. The 33 people inside died instantly.
This isn't my picture but it shows what it looks like from above today. Notice they left the rubble of the building exactly where it fell.
These pictures are ones I took while we were there.
This particular T-shaped bridge was the aiming point for the bomb.
The original bridge was destroyed. This is the bridge today, still in the same T-Shape. The destroyed building in the pictures above is directly behind me as I took this picture.
This is the river next to the destroyed building, which is out of the picture on the left.
A few hundred yards away, this is a mound where the remains and ashes of unidentified dead were buried.
These are items damaged in the explosion, including a bottle and a watch stopped exactly at 8:15, the time of the explosion.
Thanks for looking at my blog. If you have any questions about visiting Japan, send me an email to daveryan@kdwb.com
-Dave