Hello everyone,
We set off early this morning as we discovered yesterday if you reserved
in advance, you could visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum early
during special extended summer hours. So we reserved the first slot at
7.30am. We were immediately glad we had, as only about ten people headed
in when we first did. We could take as long as we liked to read and
take things in. I had read online reviews of people saying when they
went later in the day it was disappointing as it was so crowded and hard
to reflect etc.
The three hours we spent at the museum were obviously pretty solemn and
intense, but it’s always well worthwhile going to museums about tragic
world events such as the bombing of Hiroshima to learn, reflect and
share what you’ve learnt as well. Sadly with the current goings on in
the world, humanity overall never learns. And it’s always the innocent
people that get caught up and have their lives ruined in the process. I feel by visiting you are also paying your respects to them.
We started off in a gallery that showed photos of what Hiroshima looked
like before the atomic bomb, and then afterwards. Prior to 1945, Hiroshima was a
town known for its castle. The first Sino-Japanese War from 1894-1895
against China made Hiroshima an important military base as it became more
fortified during this time. This would ultimately be to the city’s
detriment down the track when the USA were determining which cities to
bomb with the atomic bombs.
We continued into the main exhibition which had a lot of information,
stories and artefacts that surviving families had donated belonging to
those they had lost. These included children’s clothes which were
confronting to see. The history I've written below is a combination of information from the museum and our walking tour later in the day:
The Tokugawa family that we read about at Osaka Castle (who overthrew
the previous inhabitants) shut Japan off from the world in the 15th century for
230 years as they wanted to avoid foreign influence that was seeping in. The USA arrived
near Tokyo by boat in the mid 1800s and wanted to set up a port. Japan
had to say yes as after being shut off for so long their weapons were
weak. There was then a civil war here in 1868, and eventually the shogun
stood down and transferred political power to the emperor. Japan still
has an emperor to this day, but he doesn’t have any political powers
these days, he has more of a symbolic role. He’s the 126th emperor, and his lineage traces directly to the first emperor from centuries ago. In the late 1800s Japan
started hearing of and seeing the colonisation happening around the
world and wanted to catch up to the west and get involved. They first
went to the Korean Peninsula, and had the war I previously mentioned a
with China (the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-1895). Then they decided to
invade more of Asia, and had a war with Russia, during which they fought
with England to beat them. During WWI, Japan invaded parts of China as
the Europeans were too busy to colonise anywhere during this time. And
as the decades went by, the territory Japan had grew and grew, and the
USA saw this as a threat. Japan at the time was importing 80% of its oil
from the USA, so the Americans assumed when asked to stop with the
threat of no oil, Japan would. But they didn’t, and instead started
invading more East Asian countries in search for oil. The USA
formally asked Japan to stop this, and they didn’t, and instead attacked
Pearl Harbour which only poked the bear further. Afterwards, the USA
joined WWII. Prior to this, the war in the Pacific had been going well
for Japan. But Japan lost the Battle of Midway in 1942 and continued to
lose more and more battles after this, losing boats and soldiers in the
process. The mentality of the Japanese government was like the samurai
spirit of “fight to the death” still at this time, so they continued to fight
in the war and wouldn’t surrender. The media lied to the Japanese public
and indicated the war was going their way. The USA warned Japan they
would bomb them if they didn’t back off (but didn’t indicate it would
use an atomic bomb) and Japan ignored the warning.
On the morning of August 6th, 1945 the USA bombed Hiroshima with an
atomic bomb 3 metres by 70 centimetres, weighing 4 tonnes. It was detonated
in the sky 600m above the city, destroying 92% of the 76,000 buildings
here (most were wooden), and creating a temperature at the sky high
explosion site of 7700 degrees Celsius. In the immediate vicinity below
the explosion, the temperature was 3000-4000 degrees Celsius. People
within 3.5km of the hypocentre (directly below the explosion) suffered
burns. Within 1.2km it burned through all layers of skin and tissues
below, killing people immediately or painfully over the coming days.
Glass windows broke and shattered as far as 27km away, and rations in
shelters people had built for air raids were carbonised. By the end of 1945, 140,000
people had died, whether straight away or in the coming weeks and months
from radiation poisoning (suffering hair loss, purple spots beneath the
skin, diarrhoea and fever).
We saw some horrific things at the museum, like a preserved tongue with
evidence of the purple spots, and some stone steps that had been out the
front of a bank where you could see a black shadow of a person that had
burned to death immediately as it was right near the hypocentre.
We read accounts of survivors immediately after the explosion trying to
find water, and drinking the black, sticky rain that came after the explosion. It was radioactive and would cause lots of future medical issues
too. I didn’t take many photos, but I did take one of a wall from a
house showing how prominent the black rain marks still are to this day.
We also read about those that came to Hiroshima to help or find their
families, and how they were unknowingly impacted by radiation too. The
rates of cancer and leukaemia spiked for decades to come, and the death
toll would eventually rise to 200,000.
I honestly don’t know what you would do if you survived an event such as
this. You’ve lost your home, your family and friends and your city, basically everything you know. Food would be
scarce. You’ve likely got horrific injuries. Where do you even begin to rebuild and go on?
Relief stations were set up in the days after, but food and medical
supplies were so scarce that many people couldn’t be helped. People
tried to find family members and apparently there were many bodies
strewn in the streets and the river, which is a stark contrast today as
it’s beautiful and blue/green in colour. Apparently people allowed
survivors to stay in their homes outside of Hiroshima, and many
temporary residences were also set up in temples, shrines and schools.
All of the partially destroyed stone buildings in Hiroshima were torn
down except for the A Bomb Dome. Many wanted it removed, but it was
kept, and in 1966 after persistent calls from junior and high school
students of the Hiroshima Paper Crane Club, the council decided to
preserve it. It was built in 1915 and was a baroque style building.
UNESCO gave it world heritage status in 1996.
The various memorials that we looked at later in the day started to
spring up in the 50s, as the government provided specific funding for
Hiroshima to rebuild in 1952 (as per the ‘Hiroshima Peace Memorial City
Construction Law’) once post war finances recovered a bit. The Peace
Memorial Park was created in 1952 in what had previously been the
bustling Nakajimacho area. The museum was built in 1955 and has called
for donations of artefacts and stories over the years. In 1958 a
‘Hiroshima Restoration Exposition’ was held to celebrate the prewar
population of 300,000 being restored. Hiroshima Castle was also restored
for this (it had been completely destroyed).
We continued to read about survivors. One in particular stood out to me,
Sadako Sasaki. When I was in grade 6 at primary school, we had a
student teacher that had lived in Japan. She ran a unit with us on Japan and we
read the story of ‘Sadako Sasaki and the 1000 Paper Cranes’. Sadako was
two when the A bomb went off. She survived, and lived a happy life until
9-10 years later when she was diagnosed with leukaemia. The story tells
of her positivity, resilience and kindness, and that she started making
paper cranes whilst in hospital as there was a Japanese tale that if you
made 1000 of them, you would be granted a wish. Her wish was to
survive. Unfortunately she died before she completed the 1000 cranes,
and from memory from the book her friends finished them in her honour.
We then learned of the stigma many survivors experienced in the years following the explosion. Many had ‘keloids’ which were calcified
growths/scars from burns on their flesh that would burn in the heat of
summer and cause a lot of pain. There was a false belief at the time
that these people’s radioactivity exposure was contagious. A press code
straight after the explosion was instituted to stop a wider publishing of the impacts the explosion was having, so misinformation was rife. The thinking was if information was published it would be detrimental to the American occupation as well and cause more conflict.
The next gallery back in the entrance building focused on discussing
nuclear weapons and their dangers, and arms races regarding these
weapons in the past. Then the next gallery was about assistance for survivors
(which didn’t come in in the form of financial assistance until 1957). Finally, there was a special exhibition called 'Memories of Friends', which included stories of many of the children that died. Particularly emotional were the diary excerpts of two girls, Mutsuko and Tomiko, that spoke of going to school each day and what life was like. They both died but their diaries were donated.
We next had an early lunch in the 'Backen Mozart' Cafe next door. I had a delicious sandwich that was made just like it would be at home, and a Sacher Torte (an Austrian cake). We sat for a while and cooled down, rested and decompressed after a tough few hours. Then we looked at a couple of nearby memorials, including the 'National Monument to School Teachers'. Many teachers and children died right near the hypocentre as they were helping to clear buildings to create firebreaks after air raids when the explosion occurred.
Next we boarded the same sightseeing bus as yesterday and got off at Hiroshima Station. We explored the food hall a bit more and had some fruit. We also saw the maple cakes that are a local specialty. We got back on the bus and headed to Hiroshima Castle to meet our 1.30pm walking tour. By this time the 'feels like' was 38 degrees Celcius again. We were lucky to have a small group of nine including us, and a lovely guide called Atiko who sought out shady spots and places to sit wherever we went. Another lady on the tour was five months pregnant!
Atiko told us she has lived in Tokyo, in the USA and in Hiroshima, and that Hiroshima is her favourite place she has lived. This is because of the resilience the city displays and the fact it is less busy than the huge manic cities elsewhere in Japan (1.2 million people live here). Manufacturing is the main industry here, and Mazda is from Hiroshima.
Our first stop was the Gokoku Shrine, which is a shrine to honour people that died in the Civil War here. For this reason there are actually 52 shrines with the same name in Japan. We learned that today was the 'Star Festival' date which is why there were pretty lanterns hanging at the shrine. Next we went past Hiroshima Castle, which as I mentioned is obviously not original. It's nicknamed 'Carp Castle'. The baseball team here are called the Carps (AKA 'koi') as in Japanese culture they are seen as being lucky. Hiroshima is named so as it means 'wide island', because when a feudal lord called Terumoto Mori arrived to start the town, he thought the land here was an island, when in fact it's not, but appears to be one because it is surrounded by six rivers. It's because of all of these rivers that the metro system here isn't in the city centre and is connected instead to outer suburbs. Instead trams run within the city centre.
We then moved on to some ruins of the military headquarters from the Sino-Japanese war times. These used to be well preserved but were destroyed by the bomb and are ruins today. We next saw a Eucalyptus tree that somehow survived, and a pond with some koi in in. Atiko said some of the more sought after koi are worth $10,000-$20,000 US!
We had a quick break in Hiroshima Gate Park, where lots of kids were splashing in the water fountains and small pools. It was the first of this type of thing we had seen in the whole country, and I could be tempted to jump in myself tomorrow....! There was a fabulous bakery here which we are definitely going to go back to as well. We also saw an observation building that had cranes on the outside, and each visitor makes a crane and drops it into the glass space down the side of the building so you can see them all from the street.
Next, we arrived at the Children's Peace Monument. This monument came about because Sadako Sasaki's classmates lobbied for it from 1955-1958. There were thousands of rainbow paper cranes behind it in cabinets. I recognised the monument from a photo in the book I read all those years ago.
Over the road, we went into what is today a souvenir shop. Atiko took us down into the basement and we learned that this was a Fuel Hall in 1945. On the day of the explosion, 37 people were working in this building. One man, Eizo Nomura, realised he needed some papers from the basement. He went to get them and heard the explosion whilst down there. The basement protected him and he survived, whilst everyone else upstairs died instantly. He lived a long life until 1982 when he died aged 83, which is amazing considering his proximity that day to the hypocentre.
Our tour ended at the Flame of Peace, which has burned continuously since 1964 and was started by the Olympic flame that year. Nearby, Atiko told us the monument we had already been to contains 125 notebooks full of the names of victims. She ended the tour by asking us to consider that everything in this park is called 'peace' not 'war', and that the people of Hiroshima want their message to be one of peace and that the world should unite and live peacefully. She also asked us to let others coming to Japan know that Hiroshima has more to offer than A bomb history. And she's right, I've found the people here lovely, and it is definitely a more chilled out city than some of the others we have visited. Nagasaki was also bombed and 90,000 people killed, but I think because of how the Peace Park, museum etc has been set up here it seems to be where people visit more to pay their respects and learn. Today, it's safe to visit Hiroshima from a radiation perspective, and it has been since one year after the bomb was dropped. Because the bomb was detonated in the air and destroyed itself as it exploded, its core was gone and it meant that the radiation went away over time. Fukushima and Chernobyl are different and continue to have radiation because they still have a core emitting radiation that was not destroyed, but just disrupted to cause an explosion.
We had a break for a couple of hours in the apartment, and then headed out for dinner. We caught the tram to an okonomiyaki restaurant Atiko had recommended, but it was shut. So we walked to another one she had also recommended inside the 'Okonomimura' village. This building contains 20 okonomiyaki restaurants, and has operated since 1963. We found a restaurant based off Google reviews called Suigun. As I mentioned when we enjoyed okonimiyaki in Osaka, it was created after WWII when food was scarce and the US troops gave out rations of flour and vegetables. There are 1000 restaurants cooking okonomiyaki in Hiroshima, and I have to say the version here was definitely even better than Osaka! The staff were so lovely at our restaurant, and we got to watch them cook it right in front of us. In Hiroshima it's all cooked together inside the outer batter layers. We must have picked a good restaurant too, as an Intrepid tour group full of Aussies and Kiwis came in soon after and enjoyed their dinner too. We were sat next to a really lovely local man who couldn't speak much English, but spoke into his phone to translate into English and communicate with us.
This was a very long blog, so well done if you've made it this far! I write the blog for me as much as I write it for others to enjoy/learn from, and on days like today I want to write out what I've learned clearly so I can revisit it one day if I want to. I hope it was clear and you learned something, too!
I spent today wondering what my Pa would have made of the museum and what we were learning about. He was a radio operator in WWII and understandably had some pretty strong opinions about the Japanese and their actions during WWII as a result. I wonder what our discussion would have been like if I could come home and tell him what it was like here. I didn't ask him many questions about WWII as he didn't like to talk about it.
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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