On Sunday morning we headed out to the Itsukushima Shrine on the island of Miyajima just outside of Hiroshima. It was a glorious sunny morning (thankfully—the night before was rainy and yucky) and we had a beautiful ferry ride out to the island. We immediately noticed that deer were littering the streets—and around each deer were people taking pictures with them. I was annoyed by how close people were getting to these “wild animals”—until one deer interrupted my picture taking by walking up to me and licking my hand. Another deer seemed to enjoy getting scratched on the head. Wild animals, ha! They were more like dogs, especially since they were much smaller North American deer; their backs only reached my waist. Japanese sized… ;)
The licking deer interrupted me as I attempted to take a picture of one of the most photographed sites in Japan: the floating torii (gate) in front of the Itsukushima shrine. Apparently at low tide this torii is surrounded by mud, so it was serendipitous that our visit coincided with high tide. The shrine itself was completely built over water since apparently the island was once considered holy and commoners back in the day couldn’t walk on it. Instead they approached the shrine by boat through the torii. Now the island is overrun with tourists arriving by the ferry load every few minutes, and vendors and cafes sell souvenirs, meals, and steamed oysters, so the modern atmosphere is a little different!
After returning to the mainland, we took a street car (there is an extensive and heavily frequented light rail system in Hiroshima) back to the city center to tour the Peace Museum and park. I was impressed that a city with such a tragic history has completely rebuilt itself: the only shadows of the tragedy are the Peace park, museum and the A-bomb dome. (The A-bomb dome is the ruin of a once gorgeous domed building that was completely gutted and almost obliterated in the bombing. The ruin has been kept up to its post-bombing state and remains as a strong visual reminder of the tragedy.)
The Peace Museum was built on the site of the epicenter of the Atomic bomb and is surrounded by the Peace Park. The Peace Park, with its multiple monuments commemorating various groups (children, mothers, school children, the general deceased), reminded me a lot of Washington DC’s mall area. The Peace Park is in the center of the city and is nestled between river forks. The monuments are very poignant: from a clock sculpture that is perpetually positioned at 8:15a (the time of the bombing), to a fire that remains lit as long as nuclear weapons exist, to a hall with the names of those killed etched in the walls, to a bronze statue of a mother shielding her babies from the blast, to a clock tower that keeps time but recognizes 8:15am each morning with chimes.
I was especially eager to see the children’s memorial since I had heard the story of the little girl who inspired it in high school. Sadako Sasaki was 2 years old when Hiroshima was attacked and came down with leukemia as a result of the radiation exposure when she was 10 years old. She believed that if she made 1000 paper cranes, she would get a wish so she folded crane after crane from her hospital bed. Accounts vary as to whether she met her goal, but she died that year and has since become a famous figure. The children’s memorial contains thousands of paper cranes sent from all over the world and while we were there, a group of students from the US was adding more cranes to the collection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadako_Sasaki
The Peace Museum is very moving and makes understanding the tragedy much more palpable. It begins with a description of the history behind WWII and the creation of the atomic bomb by notable American scientists. There was a letter to an American president written by Albert Einstein explaining that a new atomic technology could be used to create very destructive weapons. I’ve always greatly admired Einstein; not only was he a genius scientist but he was a violinist and the source of many great insights. Seeing this letter from him urging that this dangerous technology be explored was a bit upsetting and was incongruent with my picture of this man. However, I suppose times of war cause even the most accomplished and sensitive humans to do surprising things. In the course of writing this entry, I read online that some of the scientists on the Manhattan Project actually disagreed with its use on cities and instead urged for it to be dropped in unpopulated areas as a demonstration of its power. Would history have been different if that had happened? Would Japan have surrendered unconditionally? It does not surprise me that, according to the DOE, “There is probably no more controversial issue in 20th-century American history than President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.”
Many historians argue that it was necessary to end the war and that in fact it saved lives, both Japanese and American, by avoiding a land invasion of Japan that might have cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Other historians argue that Japan would have surrendered even without the use of the atomic bomb and that in fact Truman and his advisors used the bomb only in an effort to intimidate the Soviet Union. The United States did know from intercepted messages between Tokyo and Moscow that the Japanese were seeking a conditional surrender. American policy-makers, however, were not inclined to accept a Japanese "surrender" that left its military dictatorship intact and even possibly allowed it to retain some of its wartime conquests. http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/potsdam_decision.htm
I have to admit that after spending so much time in Japan and seeing Hiroshima and the memorial, I would be in the camp of historians that question the use of the bomb. I would like to imagine myself as a scientist who would have urged dropping the bomb on an unpopulated place. Perhaps one of the most shocking things I learned at the museum was that Kyoto was one of four cities on the original bomb list. I can’t imagine Kyoto, with its thousands of shrines, temples and cherry trees, being destroyed…it’s unthinkable really. Another jarring piece of information in the museum was the suggestion that because the US had spent so much money developing the bomb, it needed to justify the expense. I really hope that money that never figured in to Truman’s decision. In the face of so many lost lives, money truly pales in comparison.
The museum had two miniature models of what Hiroshima looked like before and after bomb and on the wall behind them was a giant photo of the destroyed city. All the little houses that neatly lined the streets in the ”before” model were nothing but ash in the post-bomb model. So tragic. Perhaps the saddest part to me was that at 8:15am on a Monday morning there were many groups of school children who were working on the streets to clear buildings for firebreaks. An early morning air raid warning had been lifted and children, men, and women were in the streets, going about their daily lives on a beautiful August morning. (Ironically, it was the fair-weather that fixed Hiroshima’s fate as the final bomb target.)
The later part of the museum was the most disturbing because it contained personal stories, images and artifacts from those who perished in the bombing. I had known that as many as 50,000 died over a period of several years from complications of radiation poisoning such as cancers, leukemia, etc. What I didn’t realize is that, of those who died immediately as a result of the bomb, many were alive and suffering for hours and even days before they died. Harrowing eyewitness accounts recall the masses of people (including schoolchildren) walking the streets with their arms in front of them, unable to see, with skin hanging off their limbs. There were models and sketches of what this looked like and the images, seemingly straight out of a horror film, still haunt me. The final tally of deaths from the Hiroshima bomb is estimated at 200,000: a sobering statistic.
In the earlier part of the museum was a large globe with miniature warheads representing the numbers of nuclear weapons possessed today by each country around the world. It struck me that so few countries have nuclear weapons (that we know of anyway) and that the US and Russia have vastly more weapons than anyone else. Since I was alive to remember the Cold War, it seems odd that the now struggling Russia still possesses such nuclear capacity. [I was encouraged to hear recently that the US and the Russia have agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals.]
As an American visiting this city, I expected to find resentment but instead found warm welcome and kindness so typical of everywhere we’ve been in Japan. Thank goodness that our countries are on so much better terms these days. We had to rush through the last part of the museum because we were late meeting a Japanese friend of ours who had recently moved to Hiroshima. (She sweetly and patiently waited for us and then took us to have Hiroshima okonomiyaki (a cabbage pancake), which is a specialty of the city.)
Hiroshima has rebuilt itself as a city that advocates for peace. Having seen in the museum how horribly destructive and traumatic it is to a city to experience nuclear warfare I have an increased desire to see non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. May our countries always have peace between each other and the rest of the world…
