Malaysian tour guide learns world history through Japan's sakura blossoms

One of the columnist’s young travel buddies posing in front of Hiroshima’s Atomic Bomb Dome, the remaining structure of a painful past.

On Dec 7, 1941, Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor came under the surprise attack of Japan’s Isoroku Yamamoto, sparking off a war in the Pacific region. The United States and its allies subsequently launched aggressive counter assaults and bombed Japanese cities, including Tokyo, Osaka, and Yokohama.

On Aug 6, 1945, the US dropped a five-tonne atomic bomb codenamed “Little Boy” on Japan’s Hiroshima, and three days later, “Fat Man”, on Nagasaki, which then caused an abrupt end to the World War II.