Hiroshima, Japan

I woke up early Saturday morning to meet Heather at Makino Station. We road from there to Hirakata-shi Station where we met Ruth, Dr. Paul Scott, and an overwhelmingly large amount of non-japanese all going on the trip to Hiroshima. We took the train from Hirakata-shi to Yodoyabashi, then the subway to Shin-Osaka, and from Shin-Osaka we took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima Main Station. We arrived in Hiroshima at about 10:30am. Though there is a trolly/cable-car system in Hiroshima, Ruth, Heather, and I opted to walk the distance from the station to Hiroshima Peace Park and Museum (you see more and you don't have to pay the dollar fifty to ride the cable-car).

Hiroshima is a city built almost entirely after August 6, 1945. It looks nothing like any other part of Japan I have seen. Because it was built in the era of the car, all of its roads are much wider than those in Hirakata. Its buildings are designed to look relatively modern. There were almost no structures designed to look older than 1945. Hiroshima is a city of tall buildings, modern architecture, and short trees (almost all the plants in Hiroshima are post-1945 too, of course). You could tell what structures survived the bomb simply based on how they looked. The only structures that I saw that were reminents of pre-bombing Hiroshima were two bridges and Hiroshima Preficturial Industrial Promotional Building (which is not in use). Also dotting the landscape are several memorials to family businesses (which have since been re-built) and the bombing in general. These little memorials may be a small koi pond or just a plaque.

Within thirty minutes, we arrived at Hiroshima Peace Park. The most striking memorial in the park is the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotional Building (in Japanese, the longer the phrase, the more honor it receives). This building is only 600 meters from the hypocenter and has been repaired just enough so that it can stand on its own. It survived the blast because it was made of steel-reinforced concrete, but "survived" only means that most of the walls didn't fall down.

The park is filled with several other memorials too. The next one we saw was the Children's Memorial, for all the children who suffered from the after-effects of the bomb. It was built originally for Sadako, a girl who was the star of the track team until she suddenly was diagnosed with luekemia. She folded over 1000 paper cranes in the hope that her wish of getting well would come true, but it never did. The Childrens Memorial has one small monument with a metal sculpture of a child holding a large paper crane. Behind the sculpture is a showcase for thousands of paper cranes that are continually donated by groups around the area. These are housed in glass boxes so that the rain doesn't harm them.

Across from the Children's Memorial is the Torch of Peace, which sits on a pedistal in the middle of a very large and very shallow tiled fountain. Until all nuclear arms are disabled, the torch will continue to burn. While this is an honorable wish, this means that the torch will probably never go out.

Also on the grounds are several other Peace monuments (one of which was the lantern of peace, which I think was a bit of a stretch). There is the Peace Mound which is said to be over the largest cremation site. After the bomb, it was almost impossible to identify the bodies usually and so many people died that rarely was there anyone to claim the bodies either. So, they were given mass cremation (in Japan, the average citizen is always cremated).

Further away from the museum than even the mound is the Korean Memorial, a small monument set up in memory of the Koreans that died in the bombing. Originally, this memorial wasn't even part of the park. The Koreans that died during the bombing weren't even in Hiroshima out of their own free will--they had been taken from Korea as forced laborers earlier during the war. To me, this monument seemed rather pushed to the side and forgotten.

There are also sites in the park where no monument exists and perhaps should. On the bridge over the river in the middle of the park, there is no monument to the American soldier, who, during the occupation, was mobbed and hung from the bridge, literally where I had been taking pictures. While I understand that the people of Hiroshima were angry (and had every right to be angry), the museum claimed to be giving a complete view of what happened. This lack of monument and the tiny Korean monument almost discredits their claim, along with a few other minor mistakes they made within the museum itself (Truman and Churchill did not meet to discuss whether the bomb should be dropped on Hiroshima or at all--Churchill was not aware of Truman's plans at the time. Stalin was aware that we had a new powerful bomb due to his spies in New Mexico, but what happened at Hiroshima surprised even him). Additionally, the museum downplays the fact that both sides were at war--it's not like we just randomly decided to bomb Hiroshima. Our reasons for choosing Hiroshima may have been wrong (it was virtually not attacked prior to the bomb so that the makers of the bomb could see the full effect it would have on the city, and the bomb was aimed not at any militery target, but at the center of the city) but the fact remains that we were at war and that makes neither side innocent. Plus, at the time, Pearl Harbor was still vivid in our memories and we sought revenge. Not the right course of action, but an understandable one.

As for the museum itself, I entered and went downstairs to hear our guest speaker talk first. She was in junior high school at the time of the bombing and she is incredibly brave because she frequently retells her story, meaning that she has to relive that day in her mind every time she speaks to a group of people. She was much further away from the hypocenter (which is why she survived), but she recalled that when they dropped the bomb, she thought they were aiming directly at her. Most survivors express the same thought--that the bomb was aimed at them. She was blown several feet away from where she had been standing and then was covered with dust and ash. When she woke up, she had several heavy burns all over her body and she could not find the three people she had been standing with. She did eventually find one of them and they went on a search for water. They found the river where people, seeking to ease the pain of their burns and their thirst, jumped into the river only to die. The river was already full of bodies. Our speaker, seeing that, decided not to jump in the water. On the way to the red cross hospital (one of the few buildings still standing after the blast), her friend told her to leave her. Her friend had died by the time she returned with water.

Even after the bomb, she suffered facial scars from the burns, was unable to have children, and never married. Like many bomb victims, she is constantly in and out of the hospital, being checked and treated for various cancers. The first time she saw an American after the bombing, she ran away. Later, her brother and his wife died, leaving three children that she raised as her own. She also became a Christian about 15 years after the event and has since found her peace.

After the speech, we were free to go where we wished. Ruth, Heather, and I went through the exhibits. The first three rooms are fairly straightforward, showing pictures of the city and the buildings. The first floor shows a model of the city before and immediately after the bomb. The entire city was completely decimated, leaving only three or four buildings still standing. The second floor explains some of the history leading up to the bomb--why Hiroshima was chosen (it had very little war damage), including that picture of Churchill and Truman "sealing the deal" with a handshake (which, like I said before, is incorrect). The third floor's first room talks entirely about the dynamics of the bomb itself, showing pictures of its tests in remote north america, and including a globe with marks for which countries have nuclear warheads and how many. When the warheads are disarmed, their numbers are removed. The US still has the largest number by far (russia is second, of course) but already half of our arsenal has been scratched through (meaning instead of leading the world by having four times as much as our largest competitor, we now only have twice as many).

The third floor second room is a mini-giftshop, filled mainly with books (most in Japanese) that are filled with memoirs of survivors so that (if you can read Kanji) you can read the thoughts of the survivors first-hand. Since I can't read kanji very well, there was very little of interest here for me. However, it does make me with that I knew more kanji.

The third floor third room is dedicated to artifacts and information about what an atomic bomb does to people and to material culture. This was the most difficult room to go through and it is powerful enough to make you cry. The first thing that you see once you enter through the hallway is a to-scale model of the bomb that was actually dropped on Hiroshima. It is surprisingly small--a little over a yard in length and maybe two feet in diameter. Near it is another model (larger scale) of the city immediately after the bombing. Next is a junior high school student's uniform, completely in rags. Also, there is a half-sized model of what it would be like to walk around in Hiroshima immediately after impact. You walk through rubble and fire, your body covered in burns, your clothing turned to rags, and your skin torn and dripping off your hands and arms. It is like a scene from a horror movie. Your skin just melts. Other exibits are of stones with shadows on them, found close to where the impact was. The people who died this way were completely vaporized in a flash. The flash turned the stone steps white but where the person was sitting is left the original color. There are no bones, no evidence a person was even there except for the hollow shadow. People in buildings either died from shattered glass flying at such speeds that they become imbedded in concrete, the collapsing roof tiles, or the fires that gutted the buildings still standing. Glass that is further away from the hypocenter doesn't shatter, but instead fuses together within the fires, telling us how hot the flames were. People's insides are suddenly outside their bodies, burns are everywhere, and cries for water are everywhere. Additionally, the bomb causes changes in the atmosphere, such as moisture which falls down as black rain. People were so thirsty that they drank even the black water.

Even those who survived the blast, fires, and black rain couldn't survive the acute affects of radiation. Those with their insides completely ruined died shortly. Radiation also causes the lining of your intestines to fall off, causing internal bleeding and a very slow and very painful death. Also, those who appeared unaffected would suddenly lose their hair, and have purple spots suddenly cover their entire bodies from bleeding under the skin. And even if you survive the acute affects, you live in constant fear that something will suddenly show up. Within many people, the bomb affected them through cancers that only showed up later in life. Sadako is the most well known of these people. So, the survivors who speak to audiences around Japan (of which there is a list of less then 30 still alive) live in constant fear that something will suddenly arrise and they will find themselves dying in a hospital.

The last exibit is of images that survivors drew. The most vivid to me was one of a child who went with his uncle to his uncle's house where his aunt had been. All they found was her skeleton, still standing.

I left the museum shortly after, where I finally broke down and cried.