Welcome to fabulous Hiroshima

Las Vegas-Hiroshima mashup

Vintage illustration from the 50s showing a mushroom cloud in the background of a busy street in Las Vegas. In the 50s/60s, the desert areas around Las Vegas were the site chosen for several nuclear tests.

Before the extravagant post-modern hotel & casinos and the bachelor party culture, Las Vegas became famous for another kind of tourism. Throughout the 1950s, atomic detonations in the desert areas of Nevada brought a growing number of tourists to the city and helped to make it what it is today. The atomic tourism industry was a major driver for the development of the entertainment industry and led the city’s population to a massive increase in a short time. The owner of the Horshoe Club Casino once proclaimed that “the best thing to happen to Vegas was the atomic bomb”.

Creating a dialogue between the geographies of Las Vegas and Hiroshima is meaningful for a number of reasons. It is well-known that the American aircraft was responsible for the atomic attack to the Japanese port city at the end of WW2, causing the distruction of 70% of the built environment and the killing of 90.000 to 166.000 people.
The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only episodes of use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. Afterwards, atomic bombs were only detonated in uninhabited areas, like the desert around Las Vegas, for the sake of military research and the amusement of atomic tourists.

Moreover, a crucial theme that arises from the confrontation between Hiroshima and Las Vegas is that of remembrance. The memory of the collective tragedy experienced by the city in 1945 is reflected in the urban space as it was reconstructed after the war. Aside from memorials and monuments, that are the most visible manifestation of the will to remember, the dimension of memory is very relevant in a city that was literally annihilated by the atomic bomb. Whereas Hiroshima is globally known for the tragedy and its Peace Memorial Park has become a major tourist destination for many who believe in the importance of remembering the horrors of the past in order to learn, Las Vegas has become increasingly famous for the fun, and it is characterised by a radically different kind of tourism. Since the years of the atomic tourism, the American city has found its reason for being in the idea of spectacle. The boom of the entertainment industry, which caused Las Vegas to be called “Sin City”, is associated with stories of spectacular shows and parties. Las Vegas has marketised itself as a fabulous place, some kind of Wonderland. Forgetting one’s own actions due to the excesses of the nightlife is part of the glamour.

To create fictional landscapes that mix the elements of Hiroshima and Las Vegas means to interrogate the question of whether to be conscious of the horror or to be oblivious to it. Hiroshima to retain the memory, Las Vegas to lose it.

The iconic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign (edited) welcoming visitors at a crossroad amidst the ruins in the centre of Hiroshima, 1945.

Hiroshima was built on a river delta, which makes it ideal for the map mashup. Cutting out the six rivers that compose the delta and superposing them on a map of Las Vegas at the same scale allows the making of spatial correspondences between the two cities. In the superposition I made the hypocentre of the bomb roughy coincide with what we might call the hypocentre of the fun, which is the centre of the Strip, in the municipality of Paradise, south Las Vegas.

Map mashup combining the geography and road network of Las Vegas, USA (Layer 1), and the hydrography of Hiroshima, Japan (Layer 2), at the same scale. The two layers were superposed so that the hypocentre of the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima in 1945 roughly coincides with the area that is commonly believed to be the centre of the Las Vegas Strip, a stretch of South Las Vegas Boulevard that is known for its concentration of hotel & casinos.

Aerial view of the centre of Hiroshima in 1945. A red line identifies the course of the Las Vegas Strip in line with the map mashup. The most famous hotel & casinos that are distributed along the Strip also have their hypothetical location pinpointed on this landscape of the Japanese city razed to the ground.

Starting from the map of Hiroshima I identified two areas that are crucial to the urban history of the city in the XX century. Area 1 corresponds to the hypocentre of the atomic blast and it is the main site associated with the memory of the bomb. Area 2 corresponds to the neighbourhood of Motomachi, which is interesting to undestand the struggles of the post-war period. In the following I focus on these two spots, as well as the areas in Las Vegas that correspond to them in the map mashup.

Area 1

Satellite picture mashup including the central area of the Las Vegas Strip (Layer 1) and the area of the hypocentre of the Hiroshima atomic bomb (Layer 2). Both layers are entirely visible despite fading. Blue lines (Layer 1) and yellow lines (Layer 2) emphasise the perimeter of the main landmarks or elements.

Spatial correspondences generated by the maps superposition place two of the most iconic landmarks of Las Vegas in the central area of Hiroshima that faced the greatest distruction due to the atomic blast. Before 1945 this was the busiest and most vibrant neighbourhood of the city and it was largely left empty during the years of the reconstruction, allowing the creation of the Peace Memorial Park. This means that most of the symbols of remembrance of the tragedy are also located here.

Aerial view of the area that was the hypocentre of the atomic detonation in 1945. The Paris Las Vegas, including its famous replica of the Eiffel Tower, dominates the burnt semi-empty ground on the left. On the right: the Flamingo (Las Vegas), which is the oldest casino hotel still operating. It was opened in 1946, a year after the atomic attacks in Japan. In the centre of the picture along the river, the Genbaku Dome (Hiroshima), the symbol of the tragedy is also visible. Just above that is the Aioi bridge, which was the initial target of the US aircraft Enola Gay.

Bird’s eye view of the complex of Paris La Vegas, integrated in the landscape of central Hiroshima in 1945.

The complex of Paris Las Vegas seen from the Motoyasu riverside, Hiroshima, 1945.

The buildings of The Cosmopolitan and The Bellagio (Las Vegas) in the background of the Genbaku Dome , the closest to the hypocentre among the buildings who survived the atomic blast in Hiroshima in 1945.

The Hiroshima Victims Memorial Cenotaph, at the entrance of The Bellagio hotel & casino, which was inspired by the small town of Bellagio, on Lake Como, Italy.

The statue of Sadako Sasaki holding a golden crane, part of the Children’s Peace Monument, ad the edge of the artificial lake in front of The Bellagio. The lake houses the Fountains of Bellagio, a large dancing water fountain synchronised to music. Sadako Sasaki died from leukemia from radiation of the atomic bomb at the age of 12.

Area 2

Satellite picture mashup including the area of the Las Vegas Strip between The Mirage and The Venetian hotel (Layer 1) and the area of Motomachi in Hiroshima (Layer 2). Both layers are entirely visible despite fading. Blue lines (Layer 1) and yellow lines (Layer 2) emphasise the perimeter of the main landmarks or elements.

After the atomic bomb Motomachi, the area adjacent to the Hiroshima castle, which was formerly a military reservation, was used for emergency housing. In a context of housing shortage, war survivors and people from overseas being repatriated began to build shelters along the river banks in Motomachi, which became known as the A-bomb slum. In the following decades, public authorities and public housing corporations gradually realised medium and high-rise complexes to house the inhabitants of the informal settlement, coming to a full redevelopment of the neighbourhood.

In the map mashup, the heart of Hiroshima’s change after the war corresponds in Las Vegas to the stretch of the Strip between The Mirage and The Venetian. The first is a Polinesian themed hotel & casino that is known for exotic habitats, a theatrical production involving remixes of The Beatles, and above all an artifical volcano along the Strip. The Venetian is another luxury post-modern hotel & casino resort with obvious sources of inspiration. The resort also includes an asian-themed nightclub with an infinity edge pool stocked with koi, a japanese carp, and 8 private “sky boxes” with mini-bars.

The main tower of the Hiroshima Castle, reconstructed after the war, hidden between two wings of the main building of the Venetian Las Vegas.

Satellite picture of Motomachi (Hiroshima) in 1974. Along the river is the last surviving fragment of the so-called A-bomb slum. Just above it is possible to distinguish the medium and high-rise public housing complexes that were realised to house the inhabitants of the informal settlement. The high-rise district was completed in 1978. The Hiroshima castle, surrounded by a moat, is visible on the right.

In the foreground: 1960s picture of informal housing on the riverside in Motomachi, Hiroshima. Wooden shacks and narrow streets meant that the A-bomb slum was extremely vulnerable to flames. A disastrous fire destroyed 149 houses in 1967. In the background: show-time at the artificial volcano on the Las Vegas Strip in front of The Mirage hotel & casino.

Fictional scenary with the high-rise public housing complex in Motomachi (Hiroshima), on the left, and the buildings of the Venetian hotel & casino resort (Las Vegas) on the right.

In the foreground: a hibakusha, a survivor of the atomic bomb, 1945. In the background: Miss Atomic Bomb, wearing a dress inspired by the mushroom cloud, Las Vegas, 1957.