Hiroshima

I guess most people know that the first atomic bomb in human history was dropped on Hiroshima on the 6th August 1945.  As kids growing up in Brisbane we were always told that the Americans "dropped the bomb to stop the war". The people who told us that (thereby justifying it) must never have visited The Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima - dedicated to everlasting peace and to the hundreds of thousands of victims of the atomic blast, and the truth about what happened in the blast.

Hiroshima was a lively vibrant city - about the size of Canberra when the bomb dropped - without warning at 8.15am on the 6th August. A lot of young high school age children were out and about that morning doing voluntary work building firebreaks to counter the expected bombing attacks from the allied forces (although no one was expecting an atomic bomb attack). So many of them were killed in the blast (or more horribly in the days and weeks after the blast) The National Peace Memorial Hall is dedicated to the stories of each of the almost 400,000 victims (killed or exposed to lethal radiation) of the atomic bomb attack.

This beautiful sculpture represents all the clocks that stopped at 8.15am on the 6th of August and the broken shards (of buildings) surrounding it have been collected from the wreckage of the bomb blast.

The Park has a number of monuments. This one is dedicated to Korean victims and survivors of the bombing (there were a lot of Koreans in Hiroshima at the time).

The most recognisable and poignant monument is the "Atomic Bomb Dome" building. The bomb is believed to exploded almost directly above the building and it is one of the few left standing near the epicentre of the blast. It was declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1996.

The Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound contains the ashes of 70,000 unidentified victims of the bomb.

I found the Children's Peace Monument very poignant - the statue is based on the true story of Sedako Sasaki (and her thousand paper cranes), who died in 1954 as an 11 year old, from leukaemia, the result of radiation suffered as a two year old during the bombing.

This group of children was making a presentation of their folded cranes today and then standing in silence to the memory of the children who were victims of the A-bomb attack.

The memorial has a constantly replenished collection of paper cranes stored in special cases around its perimeter - the city of Hiroshima encourages it!!!

The Memorial Cenotaph holds the names of all the people killed by the bomb. It was the first memorial monument built in the park (in 1952).

We spent quite a while in the Peace Memorial Museum - a harrowing place to visit and deeply moving. This model of the city shows how the bomb exploded about 600 metres above the epicentre, creating an unimaginable fireball (temperatures between 3000-4000oC) and explosive pressure and then lethal levels of radiation - affecting the whole of the city.

The most harrowing exhibits were of the charred remnants of clothing worn by children when the bomb hit.....

These tiny paper cranes were made by Sedako in her final days (they are minute - and made of cellophane paper!).

Barak Obama visited Hiroshima this year, the first sitting US President to do so. He didn't apologise for the bombing on behalf of the American people- but I did like his message all the same. 

 We are going to miss this man!

We all felt very sobered by our visit to the Peace Memorial Park - and spent a lot of the day processing it and trying to analyse why the US launched the attack and why they've tried to justify it ever since......

We checked out of the grand old Hotel Granvia around lunchtime and caught the train to Kanazawa (via Osaka). Train travel is so easy in Japan. We arrived in Kanazawa tonight, a bit before 6.00pm, exactly as anticipated - ready for the next adventure.