It's the sight of the charred, mangled child's tricycle, inside the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, that really ripped at my heart.
The scorched bike was donated by Nobuo Tetsutani, whose three-year-old son, Shin, died hours after the atomic bombing of their city.
Nobuo found the barely alive Shin clinging ontothe trike's handlebars, trapped under the rubble of their destroyed home, before dying later in the evening.
A mangled trike after the bomb blast.
Hiroshima's backstory needs no introduction. Like millions of fellow visitors every year, I too was drawn to the city where so many people were wiped out in one instant of apocalyptic destruction.
The biggest surprise is the irrepressible beauty of Hiroshima, an instantly agreeable city, soothingly swathed in vast green spaces, lush and leafy streets and eye-catching rivers.
The Flame of Peace.
Rather than replicate the pre-war cityscape, the new Hiroshima was built as a modern and appealing city, with easy-to-navigate streets in a grid system. I loved stepping out for a stroll and riding the trams that zip you all over the city. But it's the raw and poignant atomic legacy that dominated my exploration.
The most haunting reminder of the bombing, which instantly incinerated tens of thousands of residents, is the A-Bomb Dome.
The Cenotaph, which artfully frames the A-Bomb Dome.
Located at the confluence of the Ota and Motoyasu rivers, and adjacent to the Peace Memorial Park, this landmark was formerly the Industrial Exhibition Hall, situated at ground zero of the bombing.
When the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, it exploded 500 metres above the building, killing its occupants instantly.
Now preserved as a World Heritage site, its twisted girders, gaping holes, piles of rubble and shell-like appearance is shockingly evocative, bracketed in verdant trees.
Inside the Peace Memorial Park, I rang the Peace Bell, which visitors are encouraged to do. Nearby is the Memorial Mound, a monument containing the ashes of tens of thousands of bombing victims.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial
The saddest memorial is the Children's Peace Monument, which depicts a girl with outstretched hands, while a crane bird, the Japanese symbol for longevity, flutters above.
The monument refers to a child who believed that if she made 1000 paper cranes, she would recover from her radiation sickness.
She didn't survive, but as I noticed, the memorial is continuously adorned by fresh paper cranes made by school children all over Japan.
Across the road is the curved beauty of the Cenotaph, which artfully frames the A-Bomb Dome and the Flame of Peace, which will only be extinguished when all nuclear weapons in the world have been decommissioned, completes the memorial walk.
From there, I ventured inside the Peace Memorial Museum, which graphically showcases the sobering consequences of the atomic bombing, with photos, videos and personal exhibits, like that scorched trike.
