Hiroshima's Remarkable Recovery

Other examples of remarkable societal resilience are more recent. We can consider, for example, the atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The bomb the United States dropped was 1,500 times more powerful than any previously used.32 The fireball at the hypocenter of the blast reached several thousand degrees Celsius within one-ten thousandth of a second before igniting all flammable material within one and a half miles.33 Ninety percent of the city’s buildings were at least partially incinerated or reduced to rubble.34 Initial estimates suggested that 70,000 died because of the bombing before the end of 1945, while more recent estimates put the figure at 140,000.35 The heat from the blast was so ferocious that steps, pavements, and walls were brightened, and the people incinerated in the blast left darkened shadows. One person, thought to be a woman named Mitsuno Ochi, left a shadow on the steps of the Bank of Japan, now preserved at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in an exhibit known as the Human Shadow of Death.36

Before learning about Hiroshima’s subsequent history, I would have thought that, even today, it would be a nuclear wasteland, consisting of little more than smoking ruins—Mitsuno Ochi’s shadow on a citywide scale. But nothing could be further from the truth.37 Despite the enormous loss of life and destruction of infrastructure, power was restored to some areas within a day, to 30 percent of homes within two weeks, and to all homes not destroyed by the blast within four months.38 There was a limited rail service running the day after the attack, there was a streetcar service running within three days, water pumps were working again within four days, and telecommunications were restored in some areas within a month.39 The Bank of Japan, just 380 metres from the hypocenter of the blast, reopened within just two days.40 The population of Hiroshima returned to its predestruction level within a decade.41 Today, it is a thriving modern city of 1.2 million people.42