Travel to Japan and discover its people, history, cuisine, scenery, culture & arts.

= It’s been a year since I wrote what I wrote below, on August 5th in the U.S., August 6 in Japan, 2010.  I write this at 9:07 a.m. on August 6, 2011.  I’m in Tokyo now.  Just got back from a long, hot & humid walk down Kokkai Dori (Diet/Parliament Street), through Hibiya Park.  Anyway, it’s been years since I’ve been in Japan on August 6. =

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I write this at about 5:45 p.m. U.S. Central Time on August 5, 2010.  In about 30 minutes it will be 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 2010, in Japan — 65 years to the moment after the first use of an atomic bomb on, over, at, to, a city and its people.  Three days later, one more detonated over Nagasaki.

Last year I worked up two (2) Front Page posts regarding Hiroshima, including several photos taken when I was there in May 2008, guiding a group of University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB) history students through Hiroshima.  I don’t think I need to really add to those.  So I’ll merely cite & link them here:

A Moment for Hiroshima

Which actually goes back to my first full day “on the job” in Japan on August 6, 1990, and . . .

July 16, 1945,

. . . wherein I talk a bit about that May 2008 trip to Hiroshima (only my second time there).

Of course, both of the above contain photos, including this one:

Middle School Student. Hiroshima Peace Park Museum. May 16, 2008.

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Several months ago I posted a piece here on hotels I’ve stayed at in Japan which included this, a sentimental favorite of mine, from Hiroshima.  The hotel from which I took this photo was the ANA Crown Plaza.  Sixty-five years ago (or 63 years before the photo was snapped) it would have been just about exactly under where the bomb detonated.

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It’s now 5:59 Central Time in the U.S.  In 16 minutes it will be 8:15 a.m., August 6, in Hiroshima.