A Gate to Hiroshima
July 31, 2018
It was another day with temperatures nearing the 100’s but we were excited to take our first Shinkansen bullet train and as promised it is incredibly fast. We head west to Miyajima Island. This area is famous for it’s “floating” Torii gate. During low tide you can walk right up to it, but today we are checking out with high tide and the appearance of it floating on the water. The first Torii here was built in 1168 and the current one was built in 1875 (the 8th gate). The island also had a pagoda from 1407 with 5 stories. There were also plenty of deer walking around again and we learned that deer are thought to be sacred messengers. They were also a bit more aggressive here than Nara and we were glad we weren’t walking around with food.
The "floating" Torii Gate
Next, we headed to Hiroshima. We started with a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Museum. We listened to various accounts of atomic bomb and it’s impacts on those who survived it. We decided to get the audioguide as well, and it turns out it just reads what is written at each station, but it did make it easier when there was crowd.
Peace Memorial Park
The museums main message was that we need to ensure there is never another nuclear attack by showing the devastation it caused. One of the most moving exhibits was a section including artifacts of the area including clothing worn by victims, images of the shadows imprinted in the ground, and toys and other items melted away.
The Children's Memorial
There were also the paper cranes folded by Sadako while she was in a the hospital. She was a young girl who developed leukemia 10 years after the attack. Her story is also told in a book that Anna has taught her students many times (Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes), so she was very interested in seeing so much of her story reflected in the museum.
Chuck noted that they referred to the Nanking Massacre as the Nanking Incident. It's stood out since Chuck just learned how a right wing party created new history books that got rid of the massacre term and now call it an incident.
We walked through the Peace Memorial Park, with various memorials. The children’s memorial was built for Sadako and features a child holding a crane at the top. There is also a hill where ashes of many victims are buried and memorials are held each year.
Across the river we could see the Atomic Bomb Dome, the remnants of one of the few buildings that still stood after the bomb fell. It is thought that is survived partially because the bomb exploded almost directly overhead. Only one person in this building survived. It was really eye opening see this all in person and put into perspective how awful of an event this was in our history. It is also interesting to think that the same thing occurred to Nagasaki, but unlike Hiroshima, it is not the first thing you think of when hearing about Nagasaki.
