Rollin' Across Japan Part 5: Hiroshima

When I set off on my travels to Western Japan, I always knew that Hiroshima was going to be the centrepiece of my journey, not least because it was the 66th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb.  What took me by surprise is just how much it effected me and moved me.

The morning of August 6th started like any other morning: drab, muggy and overcast weather.  I had aimed to be in Hiroshima, specifically the Peace Park, by 8:15am - the exact time the bomb fell.  As expected it was unbelieveably busy: visitors clung to the handles of the heaving trams, and stressed-out workers shouted over the tannoy system to plea for some calm and normality.  I checked my watch: 7:30am.  The Peace Park was some 2km away.  I had no choice but to walk it.  Normally, I'd have no qualms about walking that kind of distance.  But I was suffering from an ingrown toenail and blisters, making every single step agonising.  I set my teeth, and limped towards the Peace Park.

During the walk, I was in a foul mood.  Perhaps it was a combination of the painful walk, the jostling crowds with the same idea as me and the flustered tannoy-calls echoing down Hiroshima's main street, but a cloud was over my head all the way there.  But then I approached the bridge, and my bad mood dissolved in shame at what I saw.

Through the trees, the A-Bomb Dome emerged.  The harrowing landmark has been kept in it's distressed state since it was exposed to the kilometer-wide fireball of the bomb, which consumed all in it's wake at thousands of degrees centigrade and killed thousands instantly.  Such was the power of the atomic bomb that it seared the shadows of victims onto the stones, forever presevering their echo while incinerating their body instantly.  Many 'survivors' a further distance away suddenly found themselves in hell, with everything and everyone they knew gone, their skin hanging off them like rags and their faces mutilated beyond their own parent's recognition.  Thousands more would continue to die in the coming days and months and even years, some rapidly dying from their wounds within hours, while down the years, seemingly healthy survivors would contract diseases and defomities due to their exposure to the radiation, and continue to suffer to this day.  And this is just the physical pain of things: entire families wiped out, some losing parents, children or both through indiscriminate destruction is a pain that will never heal.

Instantly, I forgot my own petty pain.  As I gazed at the A-Bomb dome, I imagined the rest of the landscape as it must have looked that day 66 years ago: a scorched wasteland, going from neighbourhood to instant graveyard within seconds.  A lump stuck in my throat, and it was to stay there for the rest of the day.

The A-Bomb, now stands as a symbol for peace, and a warning of war's futility.  Sadly, due to it's emotional impact and it's meaning to the Japanese, it is also a popular place for right-wing nutjobs to roar their factless drivel through megaphones, and they don't consider the anniversary to be a sacred enough time to shut up - quite the opposite.  Though it was a day of remembrance and to pry for peace, police were to be seen everywhere should anything break out - which it did, a couple of times, though it was quickly dealt with and dispersed without any real harm done.


The ceremony on the Peace Park was a suitably sombre affair, packing more punch this year due to the Sendai Earthquake, the destruction of which many survivor's said resembled Hiroshima.  At 8:15am, the time the bomb fell, the crowds fell quiet.  A bell rang.  Hundreds of doves were released into the air.  Then a choir of schoolchildren sand the Hiroshima Peace song.  After the ceremony, the centre of the Park around the Cenotaph, where the names of the victims are buried (no remains), and behind with is the Flames of Peace (a fire that will burn on until the last nuclear weapon has been dismantled) was reopened to the public, and a long queue formed of people from all walks of life to pray and leave flowers at the Cenotaph.  The queue would remain a-hundred-strong well into the night.  Walking around the Peace park, I was frequently approached by students who wanted to talk to me in English about World Peace, and offer me paper doves with their thoughts written on them.  I saw the Phoenix Trees, which not only survived the bomb but grew back, albeit stunted and surrounding an ever-present scar in the bark that will never heal.

The Children's Peace Monument was erected in memory of not only the children lost that day, but most of all a young girl called Sasaki Sadako, who fell ill with leukaemia in 1955. She folded paper cranes all day, every day on her sick bed in the hope that if she reached 1000, she could make a wish and be cured.  She died before reaching her goal, but her classmates continued to make paper cranes for her, and ultimately built this moment in her memory.  Today, cases stand behind the momument, encasing thousands-upon-thousands of paper cranes, made and brought from children all over the world.

And all around the park were exhibits, large and small, as calls for peace, however you interpret the word.  One such exhibit was hands-on interactive, where members of the public could queue for a flag from any of the 196 countries of the world (I got Lithuania) and wave it before a crowd while a row of people called for peace in that country win several languages.

As the afternoon peaked and the heat became unbearable, I limped to the Peace Museum.  Now, I'm not normally one for museums, but by now my interest was well and truly seized.  We all know the story of Hiroshima - the very word is synonymous with it's own history - but I didn't really understand.  And I really wanted to.  So, armed with an English Audio guide, I spent 2-3 hours in the peace museum, poring over every exhibit, as it explained every last detail: from Japan's growing military aggression in the Meiji era, America's development of a nuclear program, and Hiroshima's status as a major barracks base marking it as a prime target, right through to the facts of the bombing itself, to the victim's anguish in the moments that followed, with left over ruins and rags telling the saddest stories, to Hiroshima's recovery and caring for the victims, and it's status as a city campaigning for World Peace.  

I could sit here all day and relay the facts and horrors to you, but they are countless and freely available to anyone who looks.  But by the time I emerged, blinking into the sunlight and looking over the resurrected city, I was emotionally shredded, mind and heart heavy as I tried and failed to imagine it all burning to nothing within a blink.  Yet that is what happened 66 years ago.  The thought alone was chilling.

Evening fell, and the clouds peeled away to a blazing sunset.  The A-Bomb Dome glowed under searing floodlights and a ring of candles decorated by kids.  10,000 paper lanterns were lit and sent floating serenely down the river, also decorated by anyone who cared to donate money.  I did likewise, decorating my lantern with the kanji of 'Sekai Heiwa' (World Peace) and passing it on to be sent out to sea along with the thousands of others.


All in all, it had been an exhausting day in every sense.  I needed to unwind, and so I caught a now much-quieter tram to the city centre.  It was as bright and dazzling as any other big city in Japan, and it was an equally heartening statement as any of life's willingness to come through to see Hiroshima bigger and bolder than ever.

I headed to a place called 'Okonomimura', a shortening of the words 'Okonomiyaki', my favourite kind of Japanese food, and 'mura', meaning village.  It was four floors of Okonomyaki goodness, and I was spoiled for choice.  The Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki was as delicious as I could have hoped, and with a beer, I decompressed and reflected.


Almost immediately after the disaster and up to this very day, Hiroshima has presented itself as a centre for World Peace campaigns and nuclear disarmament.  Up to now, I had been indifferent to anti-nuclear campaigns, and thought World Peace was nothing more than an insipid wishy-washy ideology.  But whatever you think and where you stand on the reasons behind the bombing, after visiting Hiroshima I was left in no doubt: war, and nuclear weapons, especially in the modern era, are bad news, because innocent people will always suffer the most and in the greatest number.


Hiroshima is a place everybody should visit at least once.  It's not a 'nice' place to visit in a conventional sense, but it has a story to tell that everybody should hear.