THE queue for the Peace Memorial Museum winds down the steps and into the afternoon sunshine.
Awaiting the visitors inside the building is a gruesome collection of exhibits which illustrate some of the devastation caused by the world's first atomic bomb, which was developed by the United States and dropped on Hiroshima at 8.15 am on August 6, 1945.
Within seconds of the explosion, which occurred 600 metres above the city centre, an area within a radius of two kilometres from the epicentre was incinerated.
The death toll stood at 140,000 after a few days and eventually climbed to 200,000 as the radiation continued to claim lives several years after victims had been exposed to the rays.
Today, 48 years on, Hiroshima's annual memorial ceremony will be held in the Peace Memorial Park, and 10,000 candle-lit coloured paper lanterns will be floated down the city's three rivers.
It will be a time for looking back for the people of Hiroshima, who, like the people of Nagasaki three days later, when the second atomic bomb was dropped on August 9, were made to pay for the wars waged by their country's Imperial Army.