Day Trip to Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan

A day trip to Hiroshima is something many visitors to Japan want to do. It can easily be done from Kyoto, Osaka or Kobe.

This is our itinerary from our day trip to Hiroshima from Kyoto. Please be aware that this itinerary involves a lot of walking, so make sure you wear comfortable shoes and take water with you.

On 6 August 1945, United States airmen dropped a nuclear bomb which they called “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on 9 August 1945, a second nuclear bomb which they called “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki.

The Little Boy bomb, dropped from the Enola Gay was a uranium fuelled bomb. It exploded about 2,000 feet above Hiroshima. At that time, it released nearly 16 kilotons of explosive force. To give perspective to this, 16 kilotons is equivalent to 16,000 tons of TNT.

The damage from the Little Boy bomb was immense as Hiroshima is located on a plain. As a result, the force to spread further than in Nagasaki, which is located in a valley. However, as the bomb was detonated high up in the atmosphere, the radioactive fireball (or mushroom cloud) did not touch the ground. Rather it travelled up high into the stratosphere. But the damage to Hiroshima was still devastating. The blast flattened buildings within a 2.5 km radius of the bomb’s detonation point. Only 28,000 thousand of the original 90,000 buildings remained after the blast. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).