Hiroshima

Hiroshima wasn’t initially at the top of my list of places to visit during my time in Japan. It turned out to be beautiful and sobering at the same time. The city has dedicated itself to peace in the wake of its tragedy. Being the first city to ever be bombed with an atomic blast has definitely left its mark. The photo to the left is of the Dome a few hundred yards away from ground zero, and one of the few buildings to survive. They never repaired it as a reminder. Seeing the Peace Museum, complete with clothes left behind by people immediately burned left my eyes welling with tears. Many parents couldn’t identify their children except, in one case, by the lunch box he was clutching, and in another, the sandal the mother had just patched with cloth from her kimono. One child was riding his tricycle at the time (there's a photo of this if you click on the link below), and another was so caught off-guard that he was more concerned with following proper absence procedures from school the next day than the fact that he was covered in burns. He died the next day. In a surprising moment for us, we happened to witness a class of children come present gifts and origami cranes to the Children’s Peace Memorial, followed by short statements and then a beautiful song. As it turns out, this is a common field trip for schools in Japan, and as that class finished, the next one filed in, presented their version of the gifts and then sang the same song of peace. We were fortunate to catch some of this on film.

The other really notable part of the trip was that we took the shinkansen to get there and away. It’s a light rail train that goes over 300 km/hour (180 miles/hour) and arrived by the time we went to the bathroom and had a couple drinks. I tried to get photos of the front car (it looks like a race car crossed with a jet plane), but it went too fast to capture, even as it pulled into the station!

You can click HERE to see pics of Miyajima and Hiroshima, in that order. There are two pages of photos, which you can click on to enlarge or right-click to save. The second page even shows a model of Hiroshima before the blast and then another of right after.