Towards Memories of Death and Sorrow

The day before I was at one of those parties where I don’t remember whose birthday it was, but I had the resolution on traveling the next day, so I woke up at 7.00 am and I took my bag with clothes for one day and my camera, my lonely planet and enough money to keep me alive for one week, you know, in case I get lost.

One in Kyoto station I went right to the JR Line and bought my shinkansen ticket, the ride was bout 200 USD round trip but I bought only one way because I didn’t know how long would I stay, about an hour after my departure I got to my destiny, the first thing I did was to check my Lonely planet guide and see where should I head to. I arrived in front of the Peace Museum after a short ride by bus.

Hiroshima is known for being the first place of a hostile nuclear detonation, this happened in the 6 day of August in 1945 at 8.15 am during World War II (actually after Germany and Austria had already surrounded if I recall well), after that another bomb was detonated in the city of Nagasaki which is in the island of Kyushu which I visited a couple of weeks earlier. Destiny or luck or whatever you want to call it played a bad joke on me and I was born the same day of the same month thirty something years later, so much was my curiosity for such a city that I decided to go on the day of my birthday to visit all the memorials however well advised by my friends I forgot that idea and decided to go the week before.

It was around 10.00 am when I got to the museum, I was a little hungry I must say but I decided to go through the museum first and then head to a nice Okonomiyaki place, dish for which Hiroshima is also known. Once at the museum the first thing that I noticed was a piece of stone I would say white marble and some words by the Pope John Paul II were carved on it.

Walking down the halls you go though the whole history of Hiroshima, from Samurai times, to industrialized, to WWII to nowadays, an Image of the T bridge before the detonation and of course after, there is even a recreation in scale of how it used to look, and where the bomb was detonated. The T- bridge was the target for the bomb a few meters above the ground, it missed by a few blocks, not that it really mattered, 1.5 kilometers around the bomb there was no living thing left on its feet or roots.

As I left the museum I felt nauseated my hunger was gone and so my desire of more museums, though I had been to the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, still nothing can prepare you for wht you see.

I walk through the alleys of the peace park, till I found the Flame of Peace (I don’t recall its actual name), but its supposed to be burning until the last atomic bomb on earth is disarmed. Then there is the Statue of Sadako holding a paper crane, Sadako was a 12 years old girl who got leukemia due to the radiation, she had the idea that if she could fold 1,000 paper cranes she would be cured, unfortunately she died before she could finish her task, however ever since the paper cranes are a symbol of peace around the world, and people from all the countries send them to Hiroshima which always has thousands of them hanging behind Sadako’s statue.

After crossing the bridge I went towards the A-bomb Dome, which is a building that was almost destroyed by the explosion, however the government after the restoration of the city, decided to keep the dome as it is and ordered maintenance so it would always look the way it was after the bomb. A few blocks from the dome there is the actual spot where the bomb was detonated, nothing special but a plaque with the explanation about how the detonation was and where exactly (like I said it was a few meters above the ground).

After all that I shook my nausea and started to feel hungry, so I went to an Okonomiyaki place apparently it is very famous though I don’t recall its name, I had a Kirin beer and the famous dish. I must say it was delicious and sort of different from the one I tried in Nara. Once I was satisfied I took the tram towards the port which would take me to Miyajima the island that is known for its famous gate that looks like floating in the middle of the sea when the tide is high enough.

I got a Ryokan in the island which is a Japanese style guesthouse where you feel that you are living in somebody’s house rather than in a hotel. I walked towards the famous gate and on the way in addition of having the company of a handful of deer I saw a beautiful sunset just behind some hills, once at the gate I walked along the shore and until the actual site, the beautiful orange color that covers the gate and that symbolizes the color of the sun and that is believed to give protection against evil spirits is one of the things why it is so famous, and not to mention what the actual gate was for. A number of years ago (I don’t know the exact date), this was a sacred land and the Miyajima shrine was one of the most important in the area, the land was said to be so holy that no foot could be set on it, so pilgrims would have to come by boat to the entrance of the shrine, and the main entrance it was of course the Miyajima Gate.

After a set of many shots I had to cross to the main island and head to an Izacaya where I had a hearty dinner, unfortunately the last boat was to leave at 10.00 pm exactly and thereof I would miss all the fun the main island had to offer.

The morning after, I went again to the Miyajima gate since it was a couple of steps from my Ryokan and I took the next set of pictures where I can see the gate floating in the water, then I walked into the shrine that its guarding and for my surprise there was a wedding! Amazingly I could stay a couple of minutes and as respectfully as I could I took some pictures. Once done there I took the ferry back into the city, and towards the JR Line, my shinkansen left me in Kyoto early on Sunday.

The memory of what happened in Hiroshima almost 60 years ago is still painful and I don’t think it will ever pass. There is a museum in Washington DC remembering the holocaust that some Europeans went through in the World War II, they claim they stopped the war, and that they saved millions of lives, but at cost of what? Of committing the same crimes on the people of Japan?

Please visit Sadako’s website at http://www.sadako.com/