somber
today i went to the hiroshima museum of art and visited the hiroshima peace memorial park.
it was a pretty somber day all around.
hiroshima museum of art
my first stop for the day was the hiroshima museum of art. i wasn’t sure what to expect here, as i purposefully did no research on what kind of art it was, or what was on display here.
i was quite surprised to see works from monet, van gogh, and picasso as well as many others.
i didn’t photograph everything, but i got some.
this was a beautiful museum, and it was nearly completely empty. likely because it was 11 am on a wednesday, and i have now ventured beyond the places most tourists in japan go. i think i might finally be free of the enormous claustrophobic crowds absolutely everywhere.
my next stop was the hiroshima peace memorial park, and i got a couple photos along the walk there.
peace memorial park
this was something i knew i was going to see while in hiroshima, but i really was not prepared for it. i’m not sure anyone, especially an american, really can be.
my memory of the american education system is that we are not really taught the atrocity of what we did. obviously, everyone knows, but the education system sort of breezes past it like it was just an event of the war.
seeing the destruction and memorials is absolutely soul-crushing. the a-bomb dome is left up, ruined, as a memorial of the incident.
next to the dome, there was a man speaking in english to a small group of tourists. i learned that this man was kosei mito, a man whose mother was 4 months pregnant with him when the bomb went off. he has since dedicated his life to educating people about the bomb and spreading a message of peace. he comes to this spot every single day to educate tourists.
he has a website that i recommend reading if you are interested in the japanese side of this history.
one important highlight from his blog and statements i heard today is that something i was taught in school was a lie. we were definitely taught that the usa warned hiroshima and nagasaki that they would be dropping the nuclear bomb and advising people to evacuate. this was not true. according to mr. mito:
“q: Was there any warnings of the A-bombing？
· No, there were only general warnings which said, if Japan did not surrender immediately, you would get more intense air raids.
· American military authorities had decided not to give a specific warning in advance. Because they thought, if a specific warning was issued, Japanese forces might prepare to intercept American bombers, evacuate from the target area, or bring American POWs there.”
another highlight from mr. mito’s website is his mother’s testimony about it. it is a heartbreaking read. but i think it is important.
mr. mito explained that he was quite sickly growing up, likely due to exposure to radiation in-utero. no one understood the radioactive effects of the bomb, so they went to hiroshima pretty soon after the bomb went off to helpe people evacuate and see the damage for themselves. no one knew there was lingering damage.
he also explained that because the bomb denoted in the air high above hiroshima, and because of a hurricane that hit the area a month later, there was very little long lasting radiation in the area. you hear stories of places like chernobyl becoming uninhabitable for years, but hiroshima did not suffer a super prolonged radiation exposure.
he showed us some photos and explained that in the days following the bomb, the tide would bring in thousands of bodies, and then carry them back out to sea.
he told us how unnecessary the bomb was, even for accomplishing the alleged goal it had. japan was already on the verge of surrender, as admitted by multiple high ranking american military personnel at the time. mr. mito (and many others) argue that the real reason america dropped the bombs was to establish dominance on the world stage and scare the rest of the world, notably the soviet union. but the bomb was sold to the american people like some sort of “save the most american lives” solution, when the battle was already essentially over.
i also walked around the rest of the peace memorial park, and saw this children’s memorial.
this is a statue of sadako sasaki, a girl who passed away at the age of 12 in 1955 due to leukemia (known at the time in hiroshima as atomic bomb disease).
when i was a kid, i was really into reading. in third or fourth grade, i borrowed a book from my school’s library called sadako and the thousand paper cranes from my school’s library. i don’t remember it super well, as i was only 8 or 9 at the time. but i remember reading it and learning that books can be sad. i think this book might be a cause for why all my favorite stories are sad.
sadako sasaki lived about a mile away from ground zero. she was 2 years old when the bomb went off and knocked her out a window. she recovered from the impact and seemed fine. but 9 years later she, along with many other residents of hiroshima, developed leukemia. in the hospital, her friend told her a well-known japanese legend that said if you fold 1,000 origami cranes, your wish can come true. she had a lot of free time in the hospital, and made it her goal to fold 1,000 of them. but she didn’t have paper, and often used medicine wrapping or asked other hospital patients for the paper from get well gifts.
in the book i read as a child, she dies before accomplishing her goal. i have lived my entire life thinking she died trying to reach that goal. i learned today that it isn’t true, and she folded well over 1,000. i am not sure which version is more heartbreaking.
there are thousands and thousands of paper cranes in a display behind her, many of which were made by sadako herself, with others donated by children all over japan in 1955 for the creation of this monument. some were also donated by people visiting the memorial. there is a large bell beneath the statue that is audible from quite far away. i can’t describe the sound of it any other way than gut wrenching.
there is also the “flame of peace,” which has been burning uninterrupted since august 1964.
on the other side of this, the cenotaph:
the cenotaph says “安らかに眠って下さい 過ちは 繰返しませぬから.” or “Yasuraka ni nemutte kudasai ayamachi wa kurikaeshimasenukara”
there has been controversy with the translation of this to other languages. japanese often does not explicitly refer to a subject in it’s sentence structure. the message was translated into english as “Let all the souls here rest in peace; For we shall not repeat the evil.”
this is controversial to many, because the sentence in japanese does not actually say “we”. people are angry that the message can be interpreted as the japanese saying they will not repeat their mistakes. the intended message was about “we” as in “humanity” will not repeat the evil of war. a further clarification on the meaning of the cenotaph was later added:
mr. mito explained earlier in the day that this cenotaph has been vandalized a few times by right-wing japanese groups, angry that it appears to be projecting a message of admitting fault when it was not intended to do so.
today was a difficult day. i am going to nagasaki tomorrow too, so i have to mentally prepare myself for a similar experience.
