Day former Post reporter walked into Hiroshima almost 80 years ago

A small souvenir sits on a window ledge at home, seldom noticed by visitors, although it is unusual and, even when you know its history, a bit macabre, writes Rod Alker.

- by Tony Durkin

It is a memento of one of the greatest man-made disasters of all time and when it catches my eye it raises two questions.

I wonder whether it has any residual radioactivity, and I wonder about the fate of its previous owner.

Did he die a quick or a lingering death from blast, radiation or fire in the holocaust which swept Hiroshima in August 1945?

Or was he one of the survivors?

The souvenir is a small ceremonial cup for sipping sake.

Fashioned in the shape of an inverted soldier's helmet, it has a base flattened to allow it to stand on the outline of an aeroplane - a cheap, mass-produced patriotic symbol of Imperial Japan at war.

When the toe of my Navy issue boot turned it up amid the ruins of Hiroshima, it had a chipped edge and some glass fused to its rim.

That makes it, for me, a stark reminder of the fate of a city.

Decades on, Hiroshima arouses mixed emotions, some speak the name with horror, some with a guilty feeling.

Decades on, Hiroshima arouses mixed emotions, some speak the name with horror, some with a guilty feeling.

Attitudes have changed since the day it was devastated but I still feel that, terrible as it was, the first atom bomb saved more lives than it took.