Hiroshima

How to write about Hiroshima... I'm still trying to digest my visit, and the Japanese response to the event. Even two generations on, it feels no time away, the aftermath still potent, the physical and psychological suffering ongoing. In Hiroshima prefecture there are 50,000 people who were present in the area on 6 August 1945.

On a dismal, wet day the "A-Bomb Dome" (see FB photo) was first on my itinerary.  The building, originally known as the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, was designed by a Czech architect in 1915. Hiroshima citizens admired European modern-style buildings of the time and the building was well loved. Since it was located only around 160 metres from the hypo centre, the building was blown up, and all those inside the building died. However, the building was not destroyed completely because the blast of the atomic bomb, which was vaporised in the air, prevented it from totally collapsing (?). For years there was division regarding its preservation or demolition, but feeling in favour of preservation won out. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996 and now represents the Japanese people's desire for worldwide peace.

I then visited both Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall and the Peace Memorial Museum. Both are located in the area immediately adjacent to the hyper centre, just across the river from the A-Bomb Dome. Before the bomb, this was a residential suburb, with traditional wooden homes. After the explosion it was never rebuilt and the whole area is now a park, with a cenotaph and other memorials describing the buildings and lives that were lost.

In the Peace Memorial Museum I was squeezed through the exhibition rooms like toothpaste, alongside overwhelming numbers of school children. We passed a reconstruction of a bombed building; saw "before" and "after" photos of residential areas; read text panels with data on the appearance of skin subjected to different levels of radiation, how a post-nuclear reverse wind and black rain are created, the physics behind atomic-bomb creation, the distance from the hyper centre that wood/metal/concrete was laid to waste; saw a graphic model showing the extent of destruction across the conglomeration, poignant fragments of clothing, fused toys, videos of damaged survivors, melted roof tiles, samples of shard-blasted walls, data on warheads possessed (UK only behind France, in Europe).

In the end it was too much. I needed to get out. Past the hoards of children settling down to their packed lunches on the paved area outside the museum; or posing in class groups in front of the A-Bomb Dome... What can this mean to them? Like the First World War does to me? It didn't seem to be affecting their appetites as they tucked in to their bento boxes.

In retrospect it would have been preferable to visit the National Peace Memorial Hall as a follow-up. Although the rolling photo display of images of the 200,000 who died is heart-rending, and the audio-visual exhibition of children's accounts and drawings of that terrible time unbearably sad, I was moved, rather than depressed by, the emphasis on honouring the dead, providing a space for them to be remembered, and plea for peace:
"We hereby mourn those who perished in the atomic bombing. At the same time, we recall with great sorrow the many lives sacrificed to mistaken national policy. To ensure that no such tragedies are ever repeated, we pledge to convey the truth of these events throughout Japan and around the world, to pass it on to future generations, and to build, as soon as possible, a peaceful world free from nuclear weapons."

I can only admire a country that takes responsibility for its actions, and presents the story in such a comprehensive and objective way.

Addendum:
Having spent the following day with a young woman from Okinawa, the most southern part of Japan and enjoying a distinctive language and culture, I was interested to discover that the Okinawans, alongside the Allies, perceived the A-Bomb as the only way to end the war. Okinawan loss of life during the war was as much attributable to Japanese aggression (they viewed them as spies) as to the US.