4Hemispheres Photo Blog: Hiroshima

It's tough to explain what a moving experience it was visting Hiroshima and the vast Peace Memorial Park built around the atomic bomb ground zero. I really could go on and on about it (and kind of do in this post). The park is filled with memorials to those who died and there is a large museum where we learned not only about the mass devastation that the atomic bomb caused, but also the events leading up to the bomb being dropped, why Hiroshima was picked among other cities, and details behind the creation of the technology and the political atmosphere at the time.... the experience was truly moving.

The memorial museum was very well thought out and began telling the story at the late 1800's where Japan was entering war with east Asia. From there it steps you through the events leading up to and following the A-bombing including the role Japan itself played. The museum included a lot of self reflection where they were trying to communicate learned lessons from the past to make a difference for the future. Ultimately they knew they started the battle, but having experienced the devistaion of atomic bombs first hand, they are making a plea to the world to never again initiate a nuclear war.

Seeing the gruesome details, photos and accounts of the victims was more emotional than either one of us anticipated. We saw grown men crying as he stood over a display of children's clothes that had been burned to the kid's bodies from the extreme heat. Many people who were not close enough to be killed by the initial blast, were still exposed to the extreme heat which melted their skin and led to their death within hours.

There were countless stories depicted in the museum but one particular memorial was dedicated to a large group of students who were pulled out of school that day by the Japanese government to create a fire lane through the middle of the city (in support of war operations). They were all killed as they worked almost directly under the bomb's detonation point.

The amount of devistation such a small man-made device brings is incomprehendable. An entire city was leveled in 3 seconds, and tens of thousands of people were dead in the blink of an eye. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are real examples of the catastrophe on human life a nuclear war brings and reaffirms my hope that the world never sees this devistation again.

The park and museum were more places where many school kids were visiting on field trips and we had more opportunities to briefly talk to them so they could practice English. They would each hand us a crane they had folded. It was here where we learned why cranes are given as gifts.

"They were originally decorative origami however they are folded as a wish for peace in many countries around the world. This connection between paper cranes and peace can be traced back to a young girl named Sadako Sasaki, who died from leukemia ten years after the atomic bombing.

Sadako was two years old when she was exposed to the A-bomb (lived 2 kilometers from ground zero). She had no apparent injuries and grew into a strong and healthy girl. However, nine years later in the fall when she was in sixth grade of elementary school (1954), she suddenly developed signs of an illness. In February the following year she was diagnosed with leukemia and was admitted to the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital. There is an ancient Japanese story that promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by the gods. Believing that folding a thousand paper cranes herself would help her recover, she kept folding them until the end, but on October 25, 1955, after an eight-month struggle with the disease, she passed away.

Sadako's death triggered a campaign to build a monument to pray for world peace and peaceful repose of the many children killed by the atomic bomb."

A book was written about her story, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. In the years following the bomb there was a large increase in leukemia and many other diseases from radiation exposure, especially among children including children in utero.

The park has a large children's memorial and we arrived at it, a group of kids had prepared a song to dedicate to the children who were killed in the bombing. At the top of the memorial is a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane.

There is one building skeleton left standing in Hiroshima today. It was the closest building to the hypocenter that wasn't completely leveled and stands today as a reminder of the city's destruction.