Hiroshima, 8:15 in the morning

Genbaku Dome, Hiroshima Peace Memorial · Hiroshima, Japan · 1945-08-06

At 8:15 on the morning of 6 August 1945 the first atomic bomb used in war detonated almost directly above this building on the bank of the Motoyasu river; some 140,000 people were dead by the year's end. The hall's dome skeleton survived almost directly beneath the blast and was preserved as it stood. Today it is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, a UNESCO site, facing the Peace Park across the river.

The record

Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.

Finding photographs

Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.

• Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
• The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
• Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
• National and municipal archives of Japan, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.

Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.

Footage

Films are matched to this event editorially or by search; if one is wrong, tell us and we will replace it.