Saturday morning I was up at 6am to catch the shinkansen (bullet train - goes ~300km/h) from Osaka to Hiroshima. I was with a huge group of about 70 other students from the uni here, cause part of the reason for the trip was to listen to a lecture by an a-bomb survivor set up by a prof here.
When we got to Hiroshima, Lucy, Megan, Amanda and I went to the Peace Museum to look around and refresh our memories about the war and the bomb and everything before we went to the talk. It was pretty unbelievable. Of course I’d learnt about this in school and what not, but it’s so different actually being there. The museum (built by the hugely popular Japanese architect Tange Kenzo in the 1950s, who I am actually studying in my architecture class right now) had so much information… Explanations of what happened before the bombing and what exactly led to it… What happened on that day… What happened after… And lots of objects that survived were on display, watches that stopped at 8:15 which was the time the bomb hit, burnt up clothing, metal and glass that was melted by the heat… it was pretty crazy.
The talk was even more unbelievable. But the first thing that hit me about it was that the lady, now about 70, looked absolutely fine. She told us about how her face was practically melted off, and her hands swelled up to 3 times their normal size, and all this awful stuff… but she looked great. Huh? Turned out she had tons of surgery to make her look normal again. She was 15 then, and ever since has had a really tough life. Never married because people have always been kind of distant from the “contaminated” bomb survivors. Luckily (maybe?) she had her brother’s 3 children to raise, since he and his wife were killed… so, not so lucky, but made her happier.
Anyway, it was really incredible to hear that kind of stuff. I feel lucky to be part of probably the last generation that will hear from the a-bomb survivors since they’ll all be gone soon.
After, we looked around the Peace Gardens. (see photos below) It was rainy and a little cold, but sort of a fitting atmosphere for the day. The colourful things are paper cranes that people bring here from all over the world. There’s a Japanese legend that says if you fold 1000 paper cranes, your wish will come true. So this was started by a small girl who was dying from the radiation. She didn’t quite get to 1000 before she died, so her friends kept going, and now people are still doing it… We each made one on the way to Hiroshima and you can see them in the close-up picture. Those little school girls are also bringing paper cranes to the monument. They were sooo cute.
I could go on forever talking about my day. But this is taking a lot of time. So I’ll just say a couple more things. The dome in picture #8 is called the a-bomb dome, and is the only structure that has been left the way it was after the bombing. It was something like only 600m from where the bomb went off, but since it went off in the air, the force here was mostly downward, so the walls of the building are still kind of ok. Of course everyone inside died.
After such a somber, rainy day… we decided to get in a better mood. Went to our hostel, J-hoppers, and met some other travelers. Went to an amazing okonomiyaki restaurant run by a bro and sis, had some Asahi, then went out to a few bars. It was a fun day in the end.
This was just the first day of my weekend. I still have tons more to say about day number two!
