Day 17 - Hiroshima Peace Park and Museum
Word of the day - heiwa: "peace"
Today was our last day in Hiroshima, and my visit to the Peace Park. I also took time on Saturday to go to the museum, and so spent 2 and a half hours there on Saturday, and about two hours outside amongst the memorials. It wasn't an easy experience, and because of this I'm going to put the entry behind a cut. Click the link if you want to read about it, if not please don't feel obligated.
I'll also attach a warning to the link for pictures. Many are graphic, including descriptions of injuries, destruction and death. I've considered not posting them, because pictures can't really adequately express the experience here. However, I know not everyone will get to Hiroshima in their lifetime, and so I will put them up. Please only look through them if you're ready for the emotions that will come with it.
August 6, 1945 at 8:15am, the United States military dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. There are many reasons it was done, and many reactions to the decision since then. I'm not going to debate these with anyone. We each have our own reactions and emotions about the event, and it's not for anyone else to tell us how to react.
On Saturday I decided to take extra time to explore the museum. I knew having three hours on Tuesday morning wasn't going to be enough time for me to really get through the museum, as well as around to the monuments. When you first walk into the museum there is a short film, and then a section with information on Hiroshima prior to 1945. It was a large port town, and also a major military staging ground for much of Japan's war with China and the colonization of Korea during the early 1900s. As the war started, citizens throughout Japan were put on strict rations, forced to work in factories to support the war effort, and eventually even children were put into work gangs to build fire breaks by tearing down buildings in the city. in 1945 Allied Forces began firebombing the major areas of Japan, including several fierce bombings of Tokyo. The order was put out to spare the cities targeted for nuclear bombing, to better assess the impact of these weapons if used. Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nagasaki and Kokura were all targets. Kyoto was later taken off, and left as a last resort, should the war effort fail and we needed an ace in the hole so to speak.
Hiroshima was picked as the primary target due to the large factories and military outposts in the city, as well as the lack of an American POW camp. On August 8th, 1945 reconnaissance planes did a fly over early in the morning, confirming that skies were clear for a visual bombing (the most accurate and favored type). Air raid sirens sounded as the recon plans went over, but then the all clear was sounded. People had left their homes for the morning, to go to work in the factories, or in the children's case, out to the work gangs demolishing buildings. At 8:15 the B52 bomber Enola Gay visually targeted the Aioi Bridge, a unique "T" shaped bridge in the middle of the city, and dropped the bomb. There was no warning, no air raid sirens. Just another hot, clear, August day.
The museum takes you through all of this, before showing the physical damage the bombing did to the city. If you're looking for a good book to read to get a sense of the stories of those who lived it, check out "Hiroshima" by . Those closest to the flash point died instantly, completely incinerated in an instant. Those further out were not so lucky, many of them pinned by falling buildings and burned beyond any imagining. The most searing image is of those who had their skin burned and blown off of them, hanging in tatters as they wandered the city in search of aid. Most of them died within a day.
The city was demolished. So many children died because they were out in the work gangs. Some made it home to their families before dying that night. Many were never identified.
The second part of the museum looks at the effect of the bomb on victims. There are many little cases with a single item in them, such as a lunchpail or a shoe. The plaques in front tell the story of the child who they belonged to, and the English audio guide I rented told their story. While at the beginning of the museum I listed at every check point, eventually the children's stories became too much to bear. The horror of the day is that so many who initially survived died as water leached out through their burns, and there was no water to drink.
I did see the infamous bank steps, where a shadow still shows where someone was sitting at the time of explosion, instantly incinerated to dust and leaving only the vacant space he sat in. I saw pictures of actual burns, treatments, and scale models of the city before and after.
The last section told of the lasting effects of the bombing, including cancer, mutations, microcephaly among in-utero infants, leukemia, sores and disfiguration. I stood for a while in front of the story about the girl who 8 healthy years after the bombing developed leukemia, and heard that if she made 1000 paper cranes she would survive. She made over 1000 cranes, some no larger than a pencil eraser, but eventually died from her illness. The movement for a children's memorial was started by her classmates after her death, and now millions of cranes are left each year at the memorial in her memory.
Today I took two hours to explore the outside area of the Peace Park. I started at the A-Bomb Dome, which is the only surviving building from the bombing. Other than some reinforcement in the 90's to insure it's continued survival, it's the same as it was the day after the bombing. Completely gutted by the explosion and resulting fire, it stands as a skeletal reminder of that horrific day.
I then crossed Aioi Bridge, the visual target for the bomb dropping, and into the Peace Park. It's an easy park to wander around, and taking your time is essential. At the very northern end is a clock tower that chimes every day at 8:15am to mark the moment of the bomb. It's lower girders are twisted in a similar fashion to a shaft structure still inside the A-Bomb Dome building. I then wandered past the Peace Bell, but couldn't stop at that point. Down through the park, I temporarily bypassed the Children's Memorial, and went down the central pathway in search of the Phoenix trees. More benign in that they are still living, versus being wiped out by the bombing, they were transplanted to the park during construction. The trunks still bear the scars of that day, where the blast and heat of the bomb gutted the inside of the trees to the core. The hollows are still black from the heat, though the trees survived and have mended themselves around the scar.
Feeling a bit more reassured, and steeling myself for the experience, I then walked to the very front of the park near the museum and walked the center lane. This leads straight to the Cenotaph, a sculptural monument that holds the register of all bombing victims. Behind it is a pool and the Flame of Peace, and in a direct line beyond is the shell of the A-Bomb dome.
Having survived the experience without breaking openly into tears, I then went to the Children's Monument. Ringed around the outside are plastic shelters that house millions of paper cranes, singly, in strings, made into bristling mosaics of peace. There have been so many cranes left by school children that visit the park in droves they've had to come up with a makeshift way of preserving them. For all I know the 9 or 10 sheds I saw today are just holding this year's contributions.
I then roamed the rest of the park, visiting a goddess of peace, a monument to Korean victims of the bombing (many of them as conscripted laborers from then colonized Korea), and finally the Victims of the Atomic Bomb memorial mound. Thousands upon thousands of people had to be cremated on the spot in Hiroshima in the days following the attack. This earthen mound holds their ashes, and potentially those of even recent victims. There were many wooden slats along the front, which from my experience in the Buddhist graveyard means someone has been buried there recently.
From there I once again visited the Peace Bell, which is open for anyone to ring. A large group of Indian tourists were clustered tightly around it, and I didn't approach. I sat instead on a bench and journalled a while about my private feelings and impressions, most of which left me feeling unworthy of ringing the bell myself, as an American. Jodi and Charles stopped by to encourage me to visit the Memorial to the Victims, which seeing as how I had time still I did.
The memorial is a beautiful sculpture itself as a building. There is a water fountain at the top, with a sculpture of a clock with hands at 8:15. You then go downstairs underneath to enter the building. After getting a guide from the front desk (which I don't think I even looked at) I entered the Memorial Hall. A circular ramp hallway runs around and down the room, with various plaques telling you about the events of the day and the reason for the building. The ramp ends at the last plaque and you turn to face a circular room, completely dark except for the light coming in from a skylight above, right underneath the clock sculpture. The entire room is tiled in a mosaic, each tile standing for one victim. There are 140,000 tiles in the room. The mosaic is a panoramic 360 degree view from the hospital that had stood at ground zero. In it you can see a wasteland of city, the A-bomb building, a few surviving concrete structures, and mostly just devastation.
In the very center of the room, directly below the light streaming in from the dome shaped roof, is a water fountain. Also in a graphic shape of the 8:15 clock, it pours water along all round edges and into a small pool at the bottom. Looking at this, I finally felt it all sink in. The guilt, the horror, the numbness, the pain, the sadness. It's a complex moment. I also understood without knowing the importance of water. After leaving the room you go upstairs to an exhibit area, which is currently displaying a collage style film about water. So many of the victims of the bombing were crying out for water. Burn victims rapidly lose water through their injuries, because they skin no longer holds it in. The video narrated first hand accounts of survivors, retelling how the dying victims all cried and begged for water. Water. The simplest, most common of things. All they wanted was water, and to die. And so many of them did.
Outside by path of another rushing fountain I gained floor level and walked again to the children's monument. This time a class of grade schoolers were all sitting down listening to their teacher tell the story. I watched for a bit, and then made my final way past the Peace Bell. Janet was walking up to it around the time I got there, and I hung back, since we were all experiencing the park on our own. She pulled the cord for the striker, and rang the bell so quietly that no sound reached my ears. It must have sounded though, because she put her hand on the bell to feel the vibrations. As she walked away I found the courage to approach myself. Running a finger along the characters cast in the bell, I came slowly to the striker. I pulled the rope slightly, but not hard enough to push it against the bell. I tried again, and still did not connect. I didn't want to ring the bell loudly, as others might. The third pull clicked the striker into the side of the bell ever so lightly. In a tiny voice, my striking called out, "I'm ringing the bell for peace, and am so very very sorry." It is not something to shout from the rooftops, as if you can prove to anyone else that it's not your fault. You whisper your apologies in silence, hoping not to wake the dead, who have no care of your feelings of guilt or shame.
And then I left the park the way I came in, but forever different.
Full photo set at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11497507@N08/sets/72157605812228675/
Today was our last day in Hiroshima, and my visit to the Peace Park. I also took time on Saturday to go to the museum, and so spent 2 and a half hours there on Saturday, and about two hours outside amongst the memorials. It wasn't an easy experience, and because of this I'm going to put the entry behind a cut. Click the link if you want to read about it, if not please don't feel obligated.
I'll also attach a warning to the link for pictures. Many are graphic, including descriptions of injuries, destruction and death. I've considered not posting them, because pictures can't really adequately express the experience here. However, I know not everyone will get to Hiroshima in their lifetime, and so I will put them up. Please only look through them if you're ready for the emotions that will come with it.
August 6, 1945 at 8:15am, the United States military dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. There are many reasons it was done, and many reactions to the decision since then. I'm not going to debate these with anyone. We each have our own reactions and emotions about the event, and it's not for anyone else to tell us how to react.
On Saturday I decided to take extra time to explore the museum. I knew having three hours on Tuesday morning wasn't going to be enough time for me to really get through the museum, as well as around to the monuments. When you first walk into the museum there is a short film, and then a section with information on Hiroshima prior to 1945. It was a large port town, and also a major military staging ground for much of Japan's war with China and the colonization of Korea during the early 1900s. As the war started, citizens throughout Japan were put on strict rations, forced to work in factories to support the war effort, and eventually even children were put into work gangs to build fire breaks by tearing down buildings in the city. in 1945 Allied Forces began firebombing the major areas of Japan, including several fierce bombings of Tokyo. The order was put out to spare the cities targeted for nuclear bombing, to better assess the impact of these weapons if used. Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nagasaki and Kokura were all targets. Kyoto was later taken off, and left as a last resort, should the war effort fail and we needed an ace in the hole so to speak.
Hiroshima was picked as the primary target due to the large factories and military outposts in the city, as well as the lack of an American POW camp. On August 8th, 1945 reconnaissance planes did a fly over early in the morning, confirming that skies were clear for a visual bombing (the most accurate and favored type). Air raid sirens sounded as the recon plans went over, but then the all clear was sounded. People had left their homes for the morning, to go to work in the factories, or in the children's case, out to the work gangs demolishing buildings. At 8:15 the B52 bomber Enola Gay visually targeted the Aioi Bridge, a unique "T" shaped bridge in the middle of the city, and dropped the bomb. There was no warning, no air raid sirens. Just another hot, clear, August day.
The museum takes you through all of this, before showing the physical damage the bombing did to the city. If you're looking for a good book to read to get a sense of the stories of those who lived it, check out "Hiroshima" by . Those closest to the flash point died instantly, completely incinerated in an instant. Those further out were not so lucky, many of them pinned by falling buildings and burned beyond any imagining. The most searing image is of those who had their skin burned and blown off of them, hanging in tatters as they wandered the city in search of aid. Most of them died within a day.
The city was demolished. So many children died because they were out in the work gangs. Some made it home to their families before dying that night. Many were never identified.
The second part of the museum looks at the effect of the bomb on victims. There are many little cases with a single item in them, such as a lunchpail or a shoe. The plaques in front tell the story of the child who they belonged to, and the English audio guide I rented told their story. While at the beginning of the museum I listed at every check point, eventually the children's stories became too much to bear. The horror of the day is that so many who initially survived died as water leached out through their burns, and there was no water to drink.
I did see the infamous bank steps, where a shadow still shows where someone was sitting at the time of explosion, instantly incinerated to dust and leaving only the vacant space he sat in. I saw pictures of actual burns, treatments, and scale models of the city before and after.
The last section told of the lasting effects of the bombing, including cancer, mutations, microcephaly among in-utero infants, leukemia, sores and disfiguration. I stood for a while in front of the story about the girl who 8 healthy years after the bombing developed leukemia, and heard that if she made 1000 paper cranes she would survive. She made over 1000 cranes, some no larger than a pencil eraser, but eventually died from her illness. The movement for a children's memorial was started by her classmates after her death, and now millions of cranes are left each year at the memorial in her memory.
Today I took two hours to explore the outside area of the Peace Park. I started at the A-Bomb Dome, which is the only surviving building from the bombing. Other than some reinforcement in the 90's to insure it's continued survival, it's the same as it was the day after the bombing. Completely gutted by the explosion and resulting fire, it stands as a skeletal reminder of that horrific day.
I then crossed Aioi Bridge, the visual target for the bomb dropping, and into the Peace Park. It's an easy park to wander around, and taking your time is essential. At the very northern end is a clock tower that chimes every day at 8:15am to mark the moment of the bomb. It's lower girders are twisted in a similar fashion to a shaft structure still inside the A-Bomb Dome building. I then wandered past the Peace Bell, but couldn't stop at that point. Down through the park, I temporarily bypassed the Children's Memorial, and went down the central pathway in search of the Phoenix trees. More benign in that they are still living, versus being wiped out by the bombing, they were transplanted to the park during construction. The trunks still bear the scars of that day, where the blast and heat of the bomb gutted the inside of the trees to the core. The hollows are still black from the heat, though the trees survived and have mended themselves around the scar.
Feeling a bit more reassured, and steeling myself for the experience, I then walked to the very front of the park near the museum and walked the center lane. This leads straight to the Cenotaph, a sculptural monument that holds the register of all bombing victims. Behind it is a pool and the Flame of Peace, and in a direct line beyond is the shell of the A-Bomb dome.
Having survived the experience without breaking openly into tears, I then went to the Children's Monument. Ringed around the outside are plastic shelters that house millions of paper cranes, singly, in strings, made into bristling mosaics of peace. There have been so many cranes left by school children that visit the park in droves they've had to come up with a makeshift way of preserving them. For all I know the 9 or 10 sheds I saw today are just holding this year's contributions.
I then roamed the rest of the park, visiting a goddess of peace, a monument to Korean victims of the bombing (many of them as conscripted laborers from then colonized Korea), and finally the Victims of the Atomic Bomb memorial mound. Thousands upon thousands of people had to be cremated on the spot in Hiroshima in the days following the attack. This earthen mound holds their ashes, and potentially those of even recent victims. There were many wooden slats along the front, which from my experience in the Buddhist graveyard means someone has been buried there recently.
From there I once again visited the Peace Bell, which is open for anyone to ring. A large group of Indian tourists were clustered tightly around it, and I didn't approach. I sat instead on a bench and journalled a while about my private feelings and impressions, most of which left me feeling unworthy of ringing the bell myself, as an American. Jodi and Charles stopped by to encourage me to visit the Memorial to the Victims, which seeing as how I had time still I did.
The memorial is a beautiful sculpture itself as a building. There is a water fountain at the top, with a sculpture of a clock with hands at 8:15. You then go downstairs underneath to enter the building. After getting a guide from the front desk (which I don't think I even looked at) I entered the Memorial Hall. A circular ramp hallway runs around and down the room, with various plaques telling you about the events of the day and the reason for the building. The ramp ends at the last plaque and you turn to face a circular room, completely dark except for the light coming in from a skylight above, right underneath the clock sculpture. The entire room is tiled in a mosaic, each tile standing for one victim. There are 140,000 tiles in the room. The mosaic is a panoramic 360 degree view from the hospital that had stood at ground zero. In it you can see a wasteland of city, the A-bomb building, a few surviving concrete structures, and mostly just devastation.
In the very center of the room, directly below the light streaming in from the dome shaped roof, is a water fountain. Also in a graphic shape of the 8:15 clock, it pours water along all round edges and into a small pool at the bottom. Looking at this, I finally felt it all sink in. The guilt, the horror, the numbness, the pain, the sadness. It's a complex moment. I also understood without knowing the importance of water. After leaving the room you go upstairs to an exhibit area, which is currently displaying a collage style film about water. So many of the victims of the bombing were crying out for water. Burn victims rapidly lose water through their injuries, because they skin no longer holds it in. The video narrated first hand accounts of survivors, retelling how the dying victims all cried and begged for water. Water. The simplest, most common of things. All they wanted was water, and to die. And so many of them did.
Outside by path of another rushing fountain I gained floor level and walked again to the children's monument. This time a class of grade schoolers were all sitting down listening to their teacher tell the story. I watched for a bit, and then made my final way past the Peace Bell. Janet was walking up to it around the time I got there, and I hung back, since we were all experiencing the park on our own. She pulled the cord for the striker, and rang the bell so quietly that no sound reached my ears. It must have sounded though, because she put her hand on the bell to feel the vibrations. As she walked away I found the courage to approach myself. Running a finger along the characters cast in the bell, I came slowly to the striker. I pulled the rope slightly, but not hard enough to push it against the bell. I tried again, and still did not connect. I didn't want to ring the bell loudly, as others might. The third pull clicked the striker into the side of the bell ever so lightly. In a tiny voice, my striking called out, "I'm ringing the bell for peace, and am so very very sorry." It is not something to shout from the rooftops, as if you can prove to anyone else that it's not your fault. You whisper your apologies in silence, hoping not to wake the dead, who have no care of your feelings of guilt or shame.
And then I left the park the way I came in, but forever different.
Full photo set at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11497507@N08/sets/72157605812228675/