Ok so Hiroshima. I had arrogantly though I had considered the horrors of Hiroshima and that a trip there was not going to affect me so much. This arrogance stayed with me as I got of the shinkansen, left the station the wrong way and continued to walk for an hour aimlessly looking for a tram station which should have been 30 seconds away, should have known the day was not going to go according to plan there and then. I eventually realised I had gone the wrong way and as I was suppose to leave the station and go left (which I now know to be east) It soon became clear I had been going north west instead of south east. I retraced my steps and got back to the station. It’s a good job I wasn’t short of time otherwise that little excursion would have been frustrating :@.
Before realising my mistake I had attempted to ring my sister to ask which direction I should have left the station (north or south), for some reason the maps I had did not have a magnetic reference to gauge this information. One has to wonder why tourists, the ones most likely to get lost, are given the worst maps possible. It’s the same everywhere, when a tourist approaches you and asks for directions presenting you a map, with points of interest rendered in 3D and therefore obscuring all the roads. You just look at them blankly and say, in a strong American accent “im sorry but im not from around here”, heaven forgive you actually admit you can‘t read their map.
When I finally got back on track and found the tram station I made my way to the aptly named A-Bomb building. This is a building which has been preserved since the A-Bomb hit. Upon seeing this building I was obviously unnerved however it did reinforce my arrogance. This was the type of thing I had been expecting. Following this I made my way to the peace memorial park. This park is. I have to stop here because my vocabulary is not strong enough to do this justice, this is true for much of what I will be describing here so please bear this in mind and assume my descriptions are modest. The park is inspiring, there are many monuments, shrines, trees grass water. As I said I can’t do it justice you will have to go there.
Within the memorial gardens there is the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims. This is where the arrogance stopped. It is a place of resting for the 140,000 people who lost their lives. As you walk down the spiral walkway there are descriptions of the travesty and the devastation caused by this bomb. It explains that 140,000 people were thought to have died; however the true number will never be realise because of the shire magnitude of the destruction. Everything was destroyed, hospitals, government buildings, town hall(s). So this figure is only a best guess at the true death toll. It should also be noted that this death toll is only from the time the bomb hit (august 8th 8:15am Tokyo time) until the end of that year. The city was thought to have been populated by some 350,000 people the majority of which would latter die from leukaemia, tumours or remain disfigured or disabled from diseases like keloids and cataracts
At the end of this runway was the memorial, a shrine to the dead. This is a great hall with an artistic rendition of the aftermath as seen from the epicentre of the bomb. There is not much to se but the odd building and complete destruction. As I am absorbing this destruction there is an old Japanese couple praying at the fountain in the centre. I don’t know if they had lost family members or if they are just praying for peace. Either way it makes one feel very humble and as an agnostic, I wished I could jump off the fence, find something/someone I could prey to and ask this horror never be repeated.
At this point I thought the memorial shrine was done and if truth be told I was grateful; however as I made my way to the exit there was the video room. I’m not sure if this is what it is called. There are three 42” screens positioned side by side depicting the stories of survivors. I entered half way through one story describing how the mass graves which amassed daily. Bodies were laid down and then fuel pored over them and then touched. This was not performed by an army who had no contact with the people the where cremating. This was performed by those able to help restore the city. They knew the people they where cremating, or at least new them as people of their city. The harsh truth was it would have been unfeasible to perform funerals for each one of the 140,000 bodies. A tough choice had to be made and the able where asked to perform the difficult task of enacting it.
Upon hearing the latter half of this story I felt it proper to sit and here more. The next story I heard was from a medic. He described trying to treat the injured, and although he did not say, you had the grave feeling that his help acted merely as a placebo or perhaps distraction would be more fitting. First they used all medical supplies, the majority of which had been vaporise and the rest where used within hours. After all medical supplies where utilized cooking oil was applied to wounds, after a day when this had gone, medics simply applied cotton wool buds to the wounds taking away rotting flesh with every swap.
The next story was of a young teenage boy looking for his sister. The story described how he and his family searched for his 12 year old sister for 2 days. Eventfully they heard she may have been held in one of the schools been used as a hospital. As they entering the hospital and saw the wounded bodies, mostly naked and groaning with pain, sitting against walls, laying on the bare concrete floor or simply wondering around aimlessly. He searches for his sister and eventfully finds her, too weak to open her mouth he has to feed her water one drop at a time from his mouth to hers. Days later they manage to take her home, the whole family providing what help they could in an attempt to nurse the young girl back to health. We are then told how this innocent young girl died two weeks later; however the writer expresses a touch of pride that his sister managed to survive this long. The doctor stationed at the school predicted she would be dead within a day.
That was the last story for me, I felt I should stay and here all of them but I realised I did not have the strength to witness so much suffering. More details were presented in the stories which I have missed, such as wounded people barley managing to walk parading toward the able, naked and bloody, unable to scream from the pain; however much of the day has blurred, somewhat like a horrible nightmare and some of the finer details are hard to portray .
After the Peace Memorial Hall I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I had not wanted to, in all honesty I had seen a pub earlier and the thought of drowning my sorrows in a pint was much more pleasing. That would have been the easier option but you don’t get many opportunities to see a place like this and reflect on the nature of man.
The museum was very different to the memorial, many more people and less time for thought. I’m still wondering whether this was a good or a bad thing. I’ll be honest after the memorial I had not wanted to go to the museum and intended to get through it as fast as possible. The bustling crowd drowned out my morose train thought and allowed me to concentrate on the subject matter being presented in a more retracted manner. This was probably good at the time but it does occur to me that the memorial was quite empty and the museum was packed. This would suggest the experienced in the memorial would not have been shared by most. That said the museum was very detailed and I think it would be hard for anyone to leave without feeling somewhat despondent.
I chose not to take the voice walkie-talkie thing which is unlike me, I normally want all the information I can absorb. However I got the feeling that most of the information on the walkie-talkie was also written so I don’t think I lost out so much. The museum starts off with a history of japans military expansion. Explaining, without bias, there aggressive warlike tendency at the time. It is quite refreshing to see a nation admit to their actions. The history is explained from the early 1800 depicting how Japan got more and more aggressive towards its neighbours. By 1937 Japan had turned its population and industry into a predominantly military machine. It describes the attack at pearl harbour (please see here for an interesting article regarding the provocation for this attack http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1930) and how this lead to war. The museum then shifts to America explaining why the bomb was originally developed. The main reason for this was the fear that Germany would harvest the destructive power of the atom first. A letter from Einstein to hover advocating the development of a nuclear bomb also had a big part to play in this decision.
At this point have to say I was impressed to read the words of Einstein, I’m a fan of physics and he is obviously one of the stars. In Einstein’s defence he had said ”A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory”[1]. I don’t think he knew, at that time, how devastating the bomb or his letter would be. I also concede that the interpretation could be he did know how devastating It could be and still advocated the development.
The next display was perhaps one of the largest displays of (I have been unable to describe the word I wanted here so will have to explain what I mean. “A decision based on logic with no consideration of the moral cost involved. pure horrifying precision” ) I have seen. This was the display depicting why Hiroshima was chosen as a bomb site. It was not a random choice, the opposite in fact. Hiroshima, after some time, was shortlisted because it was; populated, an advantageous military target, in a valley and would therefore produce the largest amount of destruction. Sorry I have to repeat that one; it was in a valley and would therefore produce the largest amount of destruction. They realised that a valley would reverberate the blast causing maximum destruction and loss of life!
Moving on they had a 3D model before the bomb hit and … well a 2D model of Hiroshima after the bomb hit. I then went up stairs… I’m sorry I have sat have for half an hour trying to think of what was there but I can’t. Perhaps it has merge into the rest of my experience at the museum or possibly I was walking through dazed considering the horrors man can be brought to. It was quieter upstairs so the latter is possible.
I then worked into a souvenir shop and remember thinking “thank good that’s over” then I sore a sign saying “main museum this way ->”, I followed obediently. The main museum started off with a decrepit wall depicting a street from after the blast. After this you enter a myriad of rooms (im sorry but he detail will get sparse here as my brain had started to fry, as well as that I’m sat in a pub and have had a few shochu’s) displaying the devastation caused. There where glass bottles fused together, melted concrete tiles, concrete with glass shards lodged within them, charred clothes, deformed 6” thick plates, more depictions of before and after, including the aerial photos.
The whole time though the museum displayed an air of education, “this is what happens” … WHY. It explains nuclear fission, the A-Bomb, The H-Bomb, the effects of radiation on the body, why the bomb was created, how the bomb was created… and more
The last room! The last room for me was the most horrifying. This was the room which depicted how we have been since the bomb and how we are now. Bombs which are in existence now[2] are ~3000 times more powerful then the bombs dropped on Hiroshima (assuming 17Ktons for Hiroshima and 50Mtons for Tsar). It explains how powers have considered using these bombs in the gulf war and how they are still a consideration in the war on terror.
On a positive note it does go onto state that treaties which have been formed to reduce nuclear arms and to stop countries which don’t already posses the technology from developing (different argument, not now!). however it is unfortunate that the powers who have nuclear arms are reluctant to give them up and further more have developed much more destructive bombs; more powerful A-boms, the H-Bomb, Neutron bombs, as well as better delivery mechanisms; the tomahawk, cruise missile, multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV)… It seems that the power nations have not headed the lessons of history and now we have the problem that underdogs; Korea, India, Iran, Iraq are also developing the weapons. I don’t have any answers but I most certainly believe in the message which Hiroshima and Japan are trying to portray.
End nuclear armament!
[1] http://hypertextbook.com/eworld/einstein.shtml#first
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba (i know its Wikipedia but the figure is probably higher and classified?)
