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Hiroshima remembered

Broadcast Date: Aug. 6, 1985

Atomic weapons are piling up on both sides of the U.S.-Soviet arms race in the 1980s, and the threat of nuclear war is palpable. That's why Canadian peace activists are commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing: to remind people what nuclear war really means. CBC Television reports as activists paint human outlines on sidewalks in Toronto and Montreal, stage mock deaths in Ottawa and sing songs of peace in St. John's.

Hiroshima remembered

• Memorial ceremonies are held each year in Hiroshima to mark the day the bomb fell. In the morning, thousands gather in the city's peace park near the hypocentre to observe as a bell tolls at 8:15 a.m., the minute of the explosion.
• In the evening, hundreds of lighted paper lanterns are launched down the river to slowly make their way to the sea. The lanterns represent the souls of people killed by the bomb.

• Hiroshima was completely rebuilt after the war. In 1949 the Japanese government proclaimed it a City of Peace.
• The city has numerous monuments and institutions commemorating the bomb, including the peace park with its memorial cenotaph. The Peace Memorial is a domed building that withstood the atomic blast.
• As of 2003 the population of Hiroshima was about 1.13 million.

• The practice of shadow-painting derives from the belief that victims near the hypocentre in Hiroshima were vaporized and literally turned into shadows.
• Investigators in the city did find a few vaguely human-shaped marks on concrete walls and on the steps of a bank. But the marks were caused when the buildings were discoloured by the brightness of the blast. Anything blocking the light — a human body, a wall — created a permanent "shadow."

• See an additional clip in which Montreal activists are arrested for painting "shadows" on city sidewalks.
• The mid-1980s was a period of heightened anxiety about the possibility of nuclear war. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were producing, testing and stockpiling nuclear weapons. U.S. television productions such as The Day After depicted the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

• In 1983 the United States had about 9,300 nuclear warheads; two years later the Soviet Union had stockpiled roughly 10,000 atomic weapons.
• Experts estimated that a nuclear war using these weapons would kill an estimated 100 million people in the United States and Soviet Union.

• Proponents of the nuclear buildup supported the theory of "mutually assured destruction." The theory held that neither side would dare to launch a weapon first due to the certainty of a counterattack.

Hiroshima remembered

Medium: Television

Program: The National

Broadcast Date: Aug. 6, 1985

Reporter: Dan Bjarnason

Duration: 2:00

Last updated:
Aug. 2, 2005