At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945, an American B29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb, the first in human history. The Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall stood 160 meters northwent of the hypocenter.The biast and all floors, and most walls above the first floor. However, because the blast struck from almost directly above, the center of the building escaped total desruction. Enough of the frame was left to show that the front central portion was a five-story building topped by a dome. After the war, because of the skeletal dome at the top, the people of Hiroshima spontaneously began calling the ruins of what had been the Industrial Promorion Hall the Genbaku Dome, literally, A-bomb Dome. At the time, there ware two distinct attitudes toward the A-bomb Dome. Some felt it should be preserved as a memorial; others, calling it a dangerously dilapdated structure that evoked painful memories,advocated its destuction. As the city center recovered and other A-bombed buildings vanished from view, the preserve-deatroy controversy intensified, complicated by varying oponions about the mraning of the atomic bombing itself, how to convey the tragic atomic bomb experiences of survivors and family memders, and the situation of nuclear wepons in the world.