However, Gokamura continued to grow and became crucial in the campaign of the warlord Mori Motonari to take control of Chugoku, during the latter half of the fifteenth century. When Motonari's grandson Terumoto built his castle, the city was renamed Hiroshima (Wide Island). By the Meiji era the city had become an important base for the imperial army, a role that placed it firmly on the path to its terrible destiny.

As a garrison town, Hiroshima was an obvious target during World War II, but until August 6, 1945 it had been spared Allied bombing. It's speculated that this was an intentional strategy by the US military so that the effects of the atom bomb when exploded could be fully understood. Even so, when the B29 bomber Enola Gay set off on its mission, Hiroshima was one of three possible targets (the others being Nagasaki and Kokura) whose fate was sealed by reconnaissance planes above the city reporting clear skies.

When "Little Boy", as the bomb was nicknamed, exploded 580m above the city at 8.15am it unleashed the equivalent of the destructive power of 15,000 tonnes of TNT. Beneath, some 350,000 people looked up and saw the sun fall to earth. In less than a second a kilometre-wide radioactive fireball consumed the city. The heat was so intense that all that remained of some victims were their shadows seared onto the rubble. Immediately some 70,000 buildings and 80,000 people were destroyed. But this was only the start. By the end of the year, 60,000 more had died from burns, wounds and radiation sickness. The final death toll is still unknown, the figure offered by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum being "140,000 (plus or minus 10,000)".

Many survivors despaired of anything growing again for decades in the city's poisoned earth, but their hopes were raised on seeing fresh buds and blossom on the trees less than a year after the blast. The reborn Hiroshima, with its population of more than a million, is now a self-proclaimed "city of international peace and culture", and one of the most memorable and moving days to visit the city is August 6, when a memorial service is held in the Peace Park and 10,000 lanterns for the souls of the dead are set adrift on the Ota-gawa delta.

For all Hiroshima's symbolic importance, though, it's important to remember that the city is far from top of the league table of wartime suffering. In the Battle of Okinawa, 265,000 people were killed in a few weeks, more than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. In a single night of bombing in 1945, close to 200,000 died in Tokyo, while the Japanese themselves are said to have brutally massacred a similar number of soldiers and civilians in Nanking, China