Bomb Changed Hiroshima Forever (Hiroshima 50 Years after the Atomic Bomb)

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HIROSHIMA. JAPAN

The first exhibit at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is a model of the city pre-1945, with accompanying photographs and stories. They show a growing area full of industrial and military facilities.

All that changed in one appalling instant.

At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, Hiroshima became the first urban centre to experience the horrors of the atomic bomb.

With one blinding flash of light, the United States turned a booming metropolis into a charred wasteland.

The bomb had the destructive power of 15,000 tons of TNT. It instantly destroyed nearly every building within a two kilometre radius of the blast's centre, known as the …