Hiroshima Day, 68 years

I was greatly impressed by the monuments of Hiroshima, equally by those built by man and by those created by nature, like the hibaku jumoku, the atomic bombing survivor trees.

All these monuments are reminding us about the innocent lives destroyed, either instantly or during following years, in great suffering: 221,893 names are written on the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims. And we must remember each year, so that something like this never happens again...

Probably nothing depicts the cruel reality of that day more than the Atomic Bomb Dome (Genbaku Dōmu in Japanese), the ruin of the once majestic Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition, then one of the most important city landmarks. Here, the walls and the metallic frame remained standing because the explosion was right above... otherwise it would have been reduced to a pile of debris and contorted metal, like the rest of the city...