The site was called “Trinity”
At 5:29:45 am Mountain War Time on July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb exploded one hundred feet over a portion of the southern New Mexico desert known as the Jornada del Muerto – the Journey of the Dead Man. On seeing the fireball and mushroom cloud, J. Robert Oppenheimer recalled a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita: “I am become death the destroyer of worlds.” Trinity Test Director, Harvard Physicist Kenneth Bainbridge, had a less ethereal reaction, saying, “Now we are all sons of bitches.”
http://www.lanl.gov/history/atomicbomb/trinity.shtml
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Three weeks later, at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the bomb called “Little Boy”, the first of two atomic bombs dropped on Japanese cities within a 72 hours, detonated about 2,000 feet above Hiroshima. . .
Middle School Student at Hiroshima Peace Park Museum. May 16, 2008.
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In May of 2008 I and Dr. John van Sant (Professor of Japanese History) lead a group 9 UAB students to Japan for a 10-day culture and history trip. Besides Kyoto, Osaka, Nara and Himeji, we visited Hiroshima for a couple of days. I believe all of the students were moved by their time in Hiroshima. It was only my second visit. I was glad to see that the Museum had been updated dramatically since I first went there in the spring of 1991: it included extensive information about Japan’s road to war and imperial dreams, which were all but missing in the earlier incarnation of the Museum that I had seen. Nevertheless, to see all the children there and to know . . .
As any American who’s visited Hiroshima will tell you, there is simply no city with kinder, more gentle-souled people than Hiroshima. The warmth (or even nonchalance) with which they treat Americans is beyond humbling.
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"Gembaku Dohmu" (Atomic Bomb Dome). Almost directly beneath the atomic bomb's blast epicenter. It's been preserved. May 16, 2008.
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Contemporary Hiroshima Street Scene. Gembaku Dohmu just to the right. Baseball stadium just out of frame to the left (for the Hiroshima Carp). May 16, 2008.
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Teacher and students on field trip. Hiroshima Peace Park. Where they're sitting is within the area of devastation visible in the top photograph. May 16, 2008.
LetsJapan 