Hiroshima after 75 years: Walking the path of the atomic bomb

It’s a discolored concrete slab, molding in the tropical humidity. But on this slab, not much bigger than the footprint of a beach cabin, history changed.

What was once a doorway is obvious, as are the bases for a couple interior walls and an opening for a larger garage-like entrance.

I walk through the doorway, through the interior and out the garage. As I do, my guide puts these few steps in extraordinary perspective.

“You’re walking the path of the atomic bomb.”

This slab is where the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago were put together. It’s the assembly point for the dawning of the atomic age.

Now it sits, essentially ignored, on the Pacific island of Tinian, from where the US Army Air Force B-29 bombers that performed those atomic strikes on Japan departed.

North Field

Tinian is part of the Northern Mariana Islands, now a US territory in the Pacific. In 2020, it’s a sleepy, rustic, tropical paradise of 3,000 residents. There are a handful of restaurants, a few small hotels and a single gas station on its 39 square miles (101 square kilometers).

In 1944, Tinian and its sister island of Saipan, five miles to the north, were the scene of brutal fighting between the United States and Japan.

North Field, Tinian: Tinian historian Don Farrell stands on a concrete slab at North Field that was once the building where the atomic bombs went through final assembly.

Final assembly: This concrete slab on Tinian island is all that's left of the building where the atomic bombs underwent final assembly.

Loading point: Glass covers the pit from which the atomic bomb was loaded onto Enola Gay on Tinian island.

Runway Able: A sign at North Field, Tinian, marks the entrance to Runway Able, from which Enola Gay took off on its mission to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

Aerial views of the runway: Two of the runways on North Field, Tinian island, are seen from the air in January 2020. In 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay took off from Runway Able (left) on its mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

Warning: A sign at North Field, Tinian, warns visitors that unexploded munitions from World War II still pose a danger in the area.

Japanese command building: The interior of a former Japanese command building at North Field, Tinian. US forces captured the airfield in 1944.

Air raid shelter: A Japanese-construc