Posted by Jess
12 April 2011

After saying goodbye on Saturday night to a friend moving soon, I rose early on Sunday morning to catch a train to Hiroshima.  Hiroshima is on the west coast of Japan (Tokyo is on the east).  By shinkansen (bullet train), the trip is exactly four hours from Tokyo Station to Hiroshima Station.  The ticket isn't cheap, but it is easy to get there so long as you can occupy yourself on a train for four hours.  Jason and I have been discussing a trip to Hiroshima since we arrived in Japan but four hours on a train to a war memorial isn't really a great trip with kids.  So since I had a free day, I made the trek on my own.

When I arrived at Hiroshima Station, I was surprised to find it very foreigner friendly.  There was a big sign under the information desk in English.  To get to the Peace Museum... and then to get to Miyajima's Torii Gate...  They know exactly why you've come to town!  I grabbed lunch at the station and picked up a new kind of Kit Kats for us to try - Citrus Blend.  Haven't tried them yet, but I'll let you all know how they are when I do.

I followed the instructions for "to get to the peace museum..." and exited the station, getting on streetcar #6.  This streetcar had a stop right in front of Peace Memorial Park, so around noon on Sunday, this is where I started.


The entrance to Peace Memorial Park is where the Genbaku Domu (A-bomb Dome) sits.  This building was the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall and was built in 1915.  At the time, it was a beautiful building with a green curved roof and a dome.  On August 6, 1945 at 8:15am, it became the site of the first ever use of an atomic bomb in warfare.  The bomb detonated almost directly above this building and while the structure continued to somewhat stand, the interior was completely destroyed.  The building was kept in this state as a memorial to the victims of the bombing. 






In fact, there are many memorials in Peace Memorial Park that remember the children, foreigners and Japanese who died in the bombing.  The Park and Museum's main message though is to remind people of what nuclear warfare's consequences are in the hopes of keeping any country from ever using an atomic bomb again. I walked through the park on the way to the museum.  It was a beautiful day, 70 degrees with a light breeze and lots of sun.  There were many people out enjoying Hanami in the park and a band playing traditional music on the riverfront.

Children's Memorial

 I headed into the museum and paid the small admission fee (<$1) and rented an English Audioguide.  The displays here are all in Japanese and in English and there are many.  Take note if you go here that there is a lot to read.  The first section of the museum talks about the history of Hiroshima and its importance to the past wars of Japan and WWII.  Hiroshima had always been a military city for Japan from the time it was incorporated.  This section also talks about what life was like for the people of Hiroshima during the war.  As the war went on, children stopped going to school and did manual labor in town to help prepare for potential air raids, clothing and metal were rationed, and women went to work in factories.  Sounds a bit familiar, doesn't it?

Next in the museum is an area that talks about why the U.S. decided to develop and use the atomic bomb, how they picked the cities that they targeted, and how the plan came together on August 6, 1945.

The museum then shows a scale model of the town just before and just after the bombing.  The whole area that is now the park and then some goes from buildings stacked closely to each other to brown dirt.  With the heat and blast of the bomb, the buildings were burned down instantly.  The effects of the bomb are unreal.  I can't even imagine what the people must have thought happened on that morning.  No air raid preparation could have gotten you ready for the destruction of this. 

Upstairs was a section that showed how atomic bombs work and how they are made.  It then talks about which countries in the world still have nuclear warheads and how Japan, as the only country to ever have been victim to this type of bomb, advocates against them even existing in the world and how nuclear war would lead to the end of humanity.  It was pointed out that whenever a country conducts any type of testing of an atomic bomb, the mayor of Hiroshima sends a letter to that country's government asking them to stop the development of a weapon of this type.  The mayors of Hiroshima have been doing that for over 50 years.   Up to this point in the museum, I've been looking through the displays for about an hour.  The space is small but there are many displays and the explanations are thorough.

The next section is about the effects of the bomb on the people.  This section was horrible to go through and I passed through it quickly.  Many displays here talk about the junior high and high school students that were outside working at the time and how their parents couldn't find any remains of them at all or anything recognizable - just a shoe, or a lunchbox.   The heat from the blast was up to 2,000 degrees Celsius or 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit - just saying those numbers alone should give you an idea of what damage it could do instantly to a human.  The pictures of people with burns were gruesome.  You could barely tell they were people.  I am so grateful that the photos were still in black and white then.  I can't imagine the amplified effect of the photographs if they were in color.  70,000 people died that day from injuries or fires that broke out.  70,000 more died before the end of the year from the effects of the blast and the radiation.   There were only 5 photos taken on the ground the entire day after the bombing.  The news photographers were either dead or couldn't stand to photograph the suffering they saw.  I can understand why.  

Every year on August 6th there is a ceremony at Peace Memorial Park.  Over 50,000 people come to remember those that died.  Survivors from the event who have died in the past year have their names added to the cenotaph and the Peace Bell is rung at 8:15.

Cenotaph with names

Peace Bell

I am not quite sure how I got through most of the museum without tears.  Really, I thought I would be crying the whole way through.  I guess in a lot of ways it still seemed so unfathomable to me, like it couldn't have really happened.  Because the things they show you are things that parents only see in the worst of their nightmares.   But I know that it did happen and I, like the Japanese, hope that it never happens again. 

I walked back out to the warm, sunny day in the park and now it seemed so strange to me-  such a contrast from the pictures and artifacts I had just seen and I imagined how it would have been a similar morning in that exact same spot 55 years ago when it happened, with no warning.  A strange feeling indeed as I walked back to the streetcar to take me back to the station. 

More to come on the second half of the day's adventures in the next post.

Kanpai!
Jess