Itsukushima Island and Hiroshima, the City of Peace

Friday morning, I paid a brief visit to Miyajima Island. I was not planning to go there, but it turned out that the hostel I stayed at near Hiroshima was a stone's throw from the ferry to Itukushima island. It was low tide, so I didn't get to see the famous 'floating' torii actually floating, but I did get an interesting view of the sites.







This large building over looking the Itsukushima shrine was built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.


Hey dude.


Afterwards, I left my hostel and went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The A-Bomb dome, pictured above, is the ruins of a municipal building that was just a few meters from the hypocenter of atomic blast. It is a haunting reminder of the horrific destruction caused by the bomb.


The Children's Peace Monument was built in memory of the children killed or affected by the bomb. It was inspired by Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who became ill and died from leukemia caused by radiation from the blast, who set out to fold over a thousand paper cranes while she was hospitalized so that she would be granted a wish. It is debated whether or not she reached her goal, but regardless, her story led to the creation of this statue, which bears her likeness at the top.


This burial mound houses the remains of over 70,000 unidentified victims of the bomb.



I was surprised to learn that roughly 10%, over 45,000 of the people killed by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima were Korean. Many Koreans and Chinese were forced to work in Japan to support the war effort, as subjects of the Japanese empire. This monument was raised thanks to the efforts of the Korean community in Hiroshima.






The Hiroshima Peace Memorial museum is one of the best museums I have ever been to. I can not say enough about the quality of its exhibition. Although it was extremely crowded, I learned a lot about the history of the city and of the bomb, of nuclear arms and radiation, and of the personal stories of tragedy of the bomb victims.


The first item on display is this watch, which is stopped at exactly 8:15 am, the time of the bombing on August 6, 1945.


This is a replica of Einstein's letter to Roosevelt, urging him to develop nuclear weapons to counter the German efforts to build the bomb, which Einstein later regretted writing.


I was deeply impressed by the objectivity of the information displayed. The stance towards the US was not one of blame or criticism, but rather of unbiased inquiry. The exhibit did not present the nation of Japan as an innocent victim, and acknowledged the atrocities caused by the Japanese empire at the time in Asia and at Pearl Harbor, and of the forced labor of thousands of relocated Koreans and Chinese to Japan. The tragic stories of individual victims were told against a backdrop of well rounded examination of the events leading up to the decision to drop the bomb.


There was a comprehensive section on the history of nuclear arms and the present situation of nuclear arms around the world today. It is shocking to know that we now have bombs that are thousands of times stronger than the one that was dropped in Hiroshima, which is a mere speck in comparison.



Among the items on display was some skin and fingernails that fell off the body of a victim.


The red sphere above this model of the city represents the hypocenter of the blast. I did not know that the bomb actually detonated above the city rather than when it came in contact with the ground.



There was a section dedicated to the effects of radiation. Many of the hundreds of thousands of victims died as a result of sicknesses caused by radiation from the blast. Cases of bizarre mutations of the body, such as these grotesque blackened fingernails that contained blood vessels that bled when cut, were common among blast survivors, or hibakusha.



The famous shadow of a seated bomb victim on the steps of a building are housed here at the museum.



I was deeply impressed by the quality of the museum and moved by the weight of its content. I was not able to go to Nagasaki this time, but I heard that the memorials and museum there are equally as impressive. If you ever visit Japan, I urge you to pay a visit to one of these cities. It really gave me a sense of the level to which humanity sunk at its darkest hour, and of the need to build on that experience to create peace and prevent such mass destruction from happening again.