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Hiroshima was reduced to rubble in a single morning on August 6, 1945, when the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare at 8:15am. At least 70,000 people died within hours, and the total death toll by year's end reached perhaps 140,000. The city's population, which had been 345,000, fell to 137,000. Walking through the Peace Memorial Park today, which occupies the former industrial district at the center of the blast, requires sitting with what those numbers mean. The preserved ruin of the Industrial Promotion Hall, now called the Atomic Bomb Dome, is the most sober thing you will encounter in Japan.

What makes Hiroshima a complicated and ultimately inspiring place is what followed the destruction.

The city rebuilt. The population returned. By 1955, ten years after the bomb, the pre-war population levels had been restored. The city chose to make peace advocacy the center of its identity: the Peace Memorial Museum opened in 1955, the annual August 6 ceremony draws dignitaries from around the world, and Hiroshima has led the global Mayors for Peace network for decades. The oleander, which bloomed first from the scorched earth in 1945, became the city's official flower.