November: A time for remembrance - w(ar)t

During my backpacking adventures across Japan, I visited Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park - the war memorial of war memorials.  In the foreground, you can see the Cenotaph for Atomic Bomb Victims.  This Cenotaph was designed in 1952 by Kenzo Tange – a professor at the University of Tokyo.  By looking through the arch, you can see the remnants of the Prefectural Industrial Promotional Hall in the background. This UNESCO world heritage site and building are now commonly referred to as the Genbaku dome (or the Hiroshima Peace Memorial).  This building (profiled better in another image) holds immense cultural significance, as it rests almost directly underneath the hypocentre of the first atomic bomb ever dropped on humans.  

On August 6, 1945, at 8:15:17 a.m. local time, an atomic bomb was released over Hiroshima, Japan, from a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, nicknamed the Enola Gay.    The bomb was codenamed, "Little Boy", and there was nothing diminutive about it when it exploded 60 metres above ground.   By 8:16:00 a.m., those far enough from the hypocentre to survive reported seeing a “brilliant flash” (pika ピカ) followed by a “booming sound” (don ドン).  In a flash of light, twelve square kilometres of Hiroshima had been obliterated. The first devastating punch came from an immense blast of energy involving some 16 kilotons of TNT force, which was immediately superseded by a searing blast of thermal radiation that engulfed the area in a fireball and unleashed a punishing high-pressure shockwave. If that alone was not enough to decimate a people, an even greater display of wrath unfurled with an ensuing blast of ionizing radiation, which would go on to inflict further pain and suffering well beyond the moment with an insidious presence of radiation residue in the air, water and soil.   

The dawn of the atomic age had started, and the electromagnetic pulse discharged from the explosion had stopped the hands of clocks to lock down the precise moment in human history it happened.  The immediate cost was tens of thousands of lives (upwards of 140,000 people) and the destruction of 70% of Hiroshima’s buildings.  Yet, among the carnage and ash, the Genbaku held its ground, while its occupants were incinerated.   The hibakusha (the Japanese word given to a person affected by the atomic bomb) located far enough to immediately survive the blast zone would go on to tell their stories with sickening photography to back it up.   Today, Hiroshima is completely rebuilt and very modern.  The cataclysmic pain and suffering that occurred on August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima now serves as a point of remembrance and a beacon of hope for world peace and the elimination of all nuclear weapons. 

From a photography perspective, the Enola Gay was accompanied by two other plans, one of which would later come to be known as Necessary Evil.  This plane was used as a camera plane to photograph the explosion and its effects.   As a photographer, I can't even begin to imagine what I might have thought if I had been tasked to photograph the first ever atomic bomb unfurling its detonation over a populated land and then mushrooming back into the atmosphere with a roaring vengeance.   Tell me, what would you be thinking if you were the photographer aboard the Necessary Evil.   Would you be thinking about your shutter speed and exposure values, or something more profound?    Lest we forget.