Echidna | Nuclear warnings from Hiroshima decades later

There are places you visit for pleasure. And there are others like Hiroshima you visit for penance.

Subscribe now for unlimited access .

Login or signup to continue reading All articles from our website The digital version of Today's Paper All other regional websites in your area Continue

You wander through this quiet southern Japanese city on a crisp autumn morning and it seems impossibly ordinary. Yet every footstep feels like a trespass.

Beneath these rebuilt streets lie the ashes of a vapourised city and its people. Above them, 600 metres directly over your head, hangs the invisible point when, at 8.15am on August 6, 1945, the world changed.

You feel awed by the scale of the destruction. A little guilt, too, for being here; a sightseeing tourist ticking off the mu