The day the clocks stopped

On Sunday 6 August, Japanese and foreigners alike gathered in the Peace Park to remember those who died 61 years ago, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at 8.15 am, reducing the city to a scorching, grim wasteland of rubble and fire, and in which tens of thousands of people died.

It was a humid morning and the sky was a blinding blue, the heat already stifling with many an o-sensu beating the air. People clustered under the shade of trees, many wearing hats to fend off the strong sunlight, dabbing at their brow with a neatly-folded sweat-towel. Other spectators sweltered in the sun on the folded chairs that lined the lawns, facing the Flame of Peace and the rising shadow of the Dome. A choir sang songs of peace, schoolchildren gave speeches about nuclear disarmament, wreaths were laid down before the flame and a cloud of white and speckled doves was released over the crowd. At 8.15 am, hats were removed and heads were bowed as the Peace Bell tolled mournfully over the park, marking the exact minute the bomb devastated Hiroshima. Around me the cicadas rattled as if in a perpetual summer, and I shivered at the reality that here, all those years ago, people lay ragged and dying under burning trees and a blackened sun.

Towards the end of the service, Japan’s Prime Minister Koizumi gave a speech. On a lighter note, many people were standing on tippy-toe vying for a glimpse of the famous, high-powered silver hair amid the entourage of security. After a swift bow, the PM was ushered into a waiting black car with tinted windows and sped off, with a gaggle of curious onlookers sprinting alongside taking snaps.

I later rendezvoused with a fellow scholar and took a turn of the park, looking on at the various speakers and political activists handing out fliers, watching scores of people signing nuclear disarmament petitions and contemplating the paper cranes that were heaped in mounds of rainbow hues by the river.


Sir S tells me that the Japanese refer to the current time as the Era of Peace.

And so it was that thousands of people from across the country, and abroad, poured into the Peace Park throughout the day and evening of 6 August to remember the Hiroshima tragedy and pray for an end to war. Around the ruins of the A-Bomb Dome, white-pillared lanterns glimmered. They were decorated with crayon-coloured rainbows, ruins, suns, and messages, etched by the hands of children. On the river in front of the Dome, people floated paper lanterns – pink, green, blue – inscribed with their messages of peace. The atmosphere was calm, the air rhythmic with chattering families and friends and hopeful with the chorus of a singing choir.