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Hiroshima, Japan
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This place was Average
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Arriving in Hiroshima I didn’t really know what to expect or how I should feel. I approached the visit with a combination of curiosity and dread. Both of those feeling were heightened as I was cornered in Hiroshima Peace Park two separate groups of local school kids doing a school project that involved asking Gaijin all sorts of mildly antagonistic questions such as “Where are you from?”, and “Do you think your country is peaceful”. I felt my responses were sort of undermined by recent events, and I left sort in the same position I was in the first place, torn between guilt, sorrow and anger at having to justify actions I have nothing to do with to complete strangers on the street. Even if they were kind of cute little strangers. Anyway, Peace Park occupies a big chunk of land that was directly below the hypo-center of the world’s first nuclear explosion. Over 200,000 people were killed instantly, several hundred thousand more died in the following months and years from injuries attributable to the blast. There are several slightly cliched but tastefully done memorials throughout the park: an archway, with a chest containing the names of the known victims, looking past a reflecting pool and a flame that will never be extinguished until the last nuclear weapon is destroyed, and finally framing a view of the skeleton of the prefectural headquarters which was the only thing left standing for a kilometer around the hypocenter. The most unique monument is a statue of a 10 year old girl who hoped to cure herself of radiation poisoning by folding 1000 paper cranes (the crane is a symbol of long life). She died before she completed the task, but to this day thousands of cranes folded by schoolchildren around the world are delivered EVERY DAY to the statue (or to the enormous glass mailbox thingys that they put near it for that purpose). I guess they have just about every kind of monument you could ask for, but standing in a beautiful green park, I’m sure that I don’t fully comprehend the human catastrophe. Thankfully, my life lacks the required frame of reference. Even in the adjacent museum, replete with multi-lingual, multi-media presentations, I don’t think its possible to fathom the scale of what happened. The most tangible thing that I took away from the museum was the fact that the mayor of Hiroshima has protested every single nuclear weapons’ test since WWII with a telegram to the leader of the country performing the test. The rest may be too big to wrap my head around, but I can clearly grasp the need to prevent such a disaster from repeating itself. Of course, its not like I wanted to nuke anyone before, but lets say I have a new appreciation for the awesome destructive power of modern warfare, and the great responsibility placed on our world leaders. I guess I’ll end on a happier note. The city itself is as vibrant as any place I’ve been. The baseball stadium is famous as the most annoying place for an opposing team to play, due to the raucous home crowd. It’s a growing metropolis of nearly 2 million, with fun-loving residents and a great nightlife. All of which makes it even harder to fathom that nobody was left alive here 60 years ago, but on the other hand is a really encouraging display of resilience.
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Hiroshima Peace Museum
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Paper Crane Monument
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Recent Donantions
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A-Bomb Dome amidst a city reborn
Posted
Dec 05, 2004
by ckrauskopf
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