THE STORY

Catriona and I had taken the short train journey back to central Hiroshima after our visit to Miyajima island.  Before she headed north to Niigata, we enjoyed lunch in a restaurant at the station and shared a few thoughts about our travels and walks during the previous fortnight. Then she went to catch her train, and I made for the front of the station to catch a tram to the A-bomb dome.  There are actually two “fronts” to Hiroshima station, but signs indicate where the trams start from. 

One tram was clearly marked for the A-bomb Dome, and it was just a 15-minute ride along a broad, busy main street past large stores. The unique shape of the dome came into view among trees on the left, and I got off.  I just stood and looked.  A gardener was trimming the hedge around the site, but around the battered walls of the dome lay the rubble that fell there on 6 August 1945.  The bare metal skeleton of the dome looked stark and cold even on a hot sunny afternoon.  I gazed at it for some time, then walked onto the bridge providing a view of the dome across the Motoyasu river. 

A broad path ran along the riverside towards the commercial centre of the city.  Across the road from the dome, there was a game of some sort going on in a big sports stadium.  People were getting on with their lives, around this iconic reminder of the past.

The bridge gave access to the northern tip of the triangular area of land between two rivers where the devastation was most complete.  The A-bomb Dome just across the river was all that was left.  Now the triangle is the Peace Memorial Park, a wide green area with trees and a number of memorial features.  Looking back from the cenotaph holding the names of the Japanese victims of the bomb, the dome can be seen framed within it.  There’s a Bell of Peace which people can ring, and a striking Children’s Memorial erected after the much-publicised death from leukaemia in 1955 of a 12-year-old girl, with the shape of a crane to symbolise the hundreds of paper cranes which she folded in the hope of recovery.  Another memorial lists the Korean victims of the bomb.  Thousands of Koreans had endured forced labour in Japan during the war, and until quite recently the only memorial to those who perished stood outside the park.

I found a tourist information centre half-way down the park on the side facing the dome, and then made for the Peace Memorial Museum towards the southern end: a large, rectangular, long grey building built like a bridge across a wide walkway beneath.  The entrance was to the left.  The first room provided a scaled down version of the dome itself, and a scale model of how the triangle had looked before the fall of the bomb, and afterwards.  It was a very vivid contrast, showing how this part of the city had been erased (see photos).  Wall displays told the story leading up to the bombing, the reasons why Hiroshima was selected, and the events which followed.  The suffering of the victims of the radiation was particularly horrifying.  Hiroshima’s Mayor continues the campaign today for the destruction of all nuclear weapons (enter “Hiroshima Mayor” into Google for a selection of stories).

Further on were the many detailed stories of individuals who disappeared on the day of the bombing, and the efforts of members of their families to find them.  The stories are recorded and listed to with headphones, and the visible relics of melted cups and bottles and personal items are displayed in cases.  There’s the one picture taken by a journalist of survivors being cared for shortly after the bomb.  It’s all quite overwhelming, in a series of rooms with no natural light – rooms of horror.

As I walked further along the building there were suddenly views over the park, and then I walked out blinking into the sunshine.  Schoolboys were walking home from school across the nearby bridge, along with a group of salarymen, some of whom had removed their jackets in the heat.  It was life as normal.

Links –

Official site of the Peace Memorial Museum

Peace Park and the crane symbol, and more photos of the Peace Park

Contributed by: Andrew Llanwarne

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