The trip was pretty boring - 300 kilometres of utilitarian building blocks broken by the occasional paddy field or green hill for 2 hours. So, we ate
and very nice it was too! And we dozed.
Hiroshima station proved as difficult as all the others until we realised, with the help of the lady at the Information Centre, we should have used the underground corridor to get to our hotel, whch handily enough was at the station. Well done again to our hotel booker! The Hotel Gran Via is swanky enough for our wannabe tastes, the staff was nice about us leaving our bags there early ( and when we got back, all our bags, even the ones we had couriered, were in our room, ready and waiting). So nice to be cared for!
We celebrated with coffee and cake in one of the station cafes:
My chestnut cake (half eaten in my greed) was voted the winner. For a non-cake-eater, I do enjoy the Japanese cakes!
Then we set off to investigate Hiroshima. We lost our Lonely Planet book somewhere in Kyoto, so relied on the information from the nice information lady, which was excellent. We bought a day ticket to use the trams and rumbled along, crossing 2 of the rivers until we came to Aoii-bashi Bridge. This bridge formed a T-shape and was used by the American pilots as the target for dropping the atomic bomb. Ironically, the bridge survived though it was damaged. You can see from these 2 pictures the before and after shots of the area.
The second photo shows that most of the buildings and trees were flattened and that the ensuing fires did the rest.
Let me say here, that I really didn't want to come to Hiroshima, and only did because Bob wanted to. I had read a lot about it when I was younger and was terrible devastated at what happened and why it happened, and as my mum used to say, I don't like confronting the nastiness of this earth. Anyway, I was there, so I gritted my teeth, took out my wad of tissues and set off to be further educated.
The first thing we were faced with was the famous Atomic Bomb Dome. When "Little Boy", the first atomic bomb used in war was dropped at 8.15 am on 6/8/1945, almost immediately above the dome, although all of the people in it were killed, and the building damaged, parts of the structure remained intact. The city eventually decided not to demolish it, but to retain it as a memorial after some structure work, and it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was here that we came across the first of the school groups visiting the Peace Memorial Park. I thought it was very touching that this generation, so remote from what happened in some ways, is brought to learn about the history of their ancestors and , hopefully, learn about the utter destruction, horror, futility, inhumanity and cruelty of war, and hopefull, value peace. Unfortunately, judging from what I read and hear every day, most of us have not learned from history.
We crossed the bridge to the Peace Memorial Park, which used to be a busy commercial and residential area, but is now a beuatifully planted area to remember the vitims and remind us all of the horrors of nuclear war, and persuade us all to value world peace. The trees were donated by countires from all over the world.
This clock chimes every day at 8.15.
By this time, I was tearing up a bit. We came to the Children's Peace Monument, which is dedicated to the memory of the children who died as a result of the bombing.
In front of the statue, and bringing their own offerings of cranes, was a school group, who came to speak in front of the statue and sing. It was very sweet and touching watching their faces.
Other school groups sat on the grass behind them, waiting for their turn to sing. By this time, Bob was regretting bringing me, and was wondering whether to grab me an take off, but we went on.
Our next encounter was with the Peace Flame
which lined up with the Cenotaph at the other end of the pool.
Lining the sides were cypress hedges shaped into cloud-like shapes.
Throughout the park were statues, symbols and monuments like this:
But still, modern life intrudes into the sadness, and reminds us that good still survives, as do children and some hope for the future. Under the trees in the park, children were having lunch from their bento boxes. (Hey, Aussie schools, doesn't this look better, more tasty, and healthier than pie and chips?)
We passed a clock, with its time stuck at 8.15, on a mound, which was surrounded by tiles and other wreckage from the bombing
and entered the underground National Peace Memorial Hall, via a sloping corridor which circles down to a Hall of Rememberance. This circular room gives the viewer a 360 degree panorama of the city area destroyed, which is made using 140000 tiles to represent the amount of people killed. It also shows the suburbs' proxility to the epicentre. Leaving the room, we came to a changing display of the people who, and the city which, werte and was affected. There are computers there so you can look up the names of the people who died. I had not realised that it was not only Japanese who died, but Koreans and Allied POWs. We looked up the surnames of our families, and Bob found a young American with his surname, which made it seem closer. What strikes you, when you look at those faces, is that as well as killing soldiers, innocent mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, grandparents and babies died because of the bomb. And so many suffered, sometimes for years, as a result of the radiation .
We tried to get into Museum, but it was so full of students and visitors that we couldn't see or move.
We retreated and headed down into the basement, passed paintings commemorating the event, and it was nearly deserted, so we spent time there learning about how individuals were affected. We saw pitiful reminders of loved ones that people had kept to remind them of relatives and friends who had disappeared or died: a wristwatch, a ripped and stained dress, a sword and leg pads, a lunch box, a belt, the remains of some trousers, a statue with a burned back, some melted coins. We heard recordings of people remembering that day. One waoman ran out to look at the planes with her brothers, and as they waved, the bomb dropped and the three children were burned bright red, their house collapsed, their mother came out with a bleeding head. Three of the four died, and one suffered tremendous pain. The regrets of a man who, as a boy, shamed his brother into going to work in Hiroshima. The memories of a man who lost all his family. It forced us to realise that the victims of war, whether aggressor or defender, are all people.
We tried again to get into the museum, but the crowd had not abated, so we wanderd off to look for lunch. In the park, we found these very plump cats
The black one had a bob-tail.
We also discovered these monuments:
We investigated Hondori shopping centre by foot, and rode the tram car to investigate the cafes by Kyobashi Bridge, but in the end returned to the open cafe near the cruise boats for Italian style oyster and mussels, since Hiroshima is famous for its oysters
Since we were near the ferry, we wondered whether to do a river cruise. Bob found that we could do a sea cruise round the islands, so we took a very, very, very, long tram ride through some of the most unattractive areas I have seen, with some fairly, shall we say, "appearance challenged" people to the harbour, which was actually very neat and tidy compared to most harbours I have visited, and I have seen a lot! It had a fairly misty view of the islands
And the boat we needed was in the harbour but sans crew. And, it apparently sailed only once a day and once a night. Chagrined and tired we took another long, long, long tram trip back and settled in for the night in our new hotel:
with its city view:
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