Visiting Hiroshima, like Rotterdam, while I’m looking at the contemporary skyline there’s a black-and-white photo in my mind of a city reduced to rubble from an aerial bombardment. There’s not much beauty to the functional look of a modern city unless you realize it has risen from almost total destruction. What would be mundane is now magnificent, the passage of time allowing a contrast that is magical.
Busy city, maker of Mazdas, Hiroshima is for me an urban shrine to the spirit of recovery.
The production of cars in Hiroshima is partly because factories take sediment from the Ota river and in a tatara process create soft iron from the sand mined in the Chugoku mountains. For the denizens of Hiroshima assembling cars comes from a tradition of “monozukuri”—creation and craftsmanship.
Given the increasing use of drones in the war in Ukraine I wonder if we will see less bombing of buildings? Reminds me of a poll on SNL in the 60s about the neutron bomb which just killed people and didn’t destroy buildings. People were against it and buildings were for it.
Interesting how precision bombing might desensitize us to the broader impact of an attack.
What is soft iron and how is it used in cars?
Apparently soft iron has very little carbon and is easy to demagnetize whereas hard iron isn’t easy to demagnetize. The Tatara process mixes hard iron with soft iron. I guess that makes my Mazda a safe place to use a compass.
Also, I think soft iron might be easier to shape into swords and various tools.