The A-bomb Dome Through My Eyes
by Koji Hosokawa, A-bomb Survivor
The A-bomb Dome was originally designed by the Czech architect Jan Letzel (1880-1925). It was completed in 1915 and later became the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. The beautiful Eastern European-style building was a novelty in a provincial city in those days. Still, it was a perfect fit in the landscape of the castle city’s traditional townhouses along the Motoyasu River and the citizens of Hiroshima were very proud of it.
But on August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb exploded close by the building, ravaging it in an instant and killing all the employees outright. Fire then gutted the building and burned up the workers’ bodies, leaving behind no clues to identify the splintered bones. The remains, reduced to fragments, have long since returned to the earth.
The life of the building spanned only 30 years. Was its destiny, rather, to become the A-bomb Dome, a symbol of Hiroshima? To my eyes, the wrecked building is a gravestone for the victims of the atomic bomb and the skeletal steel dome at its top is a crown of thorns.
Right after the bombing, riverbanks throughout the city teemed with the dying as they searched for water. Many drowned and sank in the river or drifted downstream, still alive. Those who fled to the riverbank by the A-bomb Dome saw, with dazed eyes, the broken building in flames. It must have been an inferno, as if the end of the world was at hand. This, in fact, is what I felt, too, in my own experience of the bombing and I took these photographs of the A-bomb Dome from the point-of-view of those who were dying that day.
Last year, I was offered the chance to go inside the A-bomb Dome. When I stood under the dome’s framework, beneath my feet were broken bricks with keloid-like deformities due to the bomb’s powerful heat rays. I felt as if I were in another dimension, of eerie silence, isolated from the din of the outside world. I became rooted to the spot where I found shards of broken tea cups and misshapen glass bottles in the rubble. It was as if the people who had used those things were still breathing, right beside me. Inside the A-bomb Dome, time has stopped at the moment of the bombing.
When I learned I could go inside the building and take photographs, I was so pleased to have this rare opportunity. But when I actually entered the site, I froze for some reason and I was only able to raise my camera for a few pictures. I could have taken better advantage of the chance, but it was nevertheless a very valuable experience in the final chapter of my life. In fact, until I was asked to write these thoughts, I had never told anyone about my experience of the A-bomb Dome or shared my photographs of the building publicly.
Koji Hosokawa was born in Hiroshima in 1928. At the age of 17, he was exposed to the atomic bomb 1.4 kilometers from the hypocenter. Although Mr. Hosokawa survived, his sister, who had been engaged in dismantling buildings near the hypocenter to make fire lanes, perished in the blast. Since April 2000, Mr. Hosokawa has been a volunteer guide at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. In April 2005 he began sharing his A-bomb experience as a member of a group of survivors formed by the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation.