For our only full day in Hiroshima, I had planned to hit as much of the "big stuff" as possible. For us, that meant visiting the A-bomb dome and the Peace Park and then spending the afternoon on Miyajima Island.
Our hotel, the Rihga Royal Hotel, was literally across the street from the A-bomb dome. It also happens to be the tallest building in Hiroshima. We were on the 24th floor and had an unobstructed view of Hiroshima Castle.
As we walked into the park, the first thing we encountered was the A-bomb dome. This was almost directly below the epicenter of the blast. Amazingly, the structure of the building is still standing. Unfortunately, while we were there they were assessing its structural integrity and so we had to see it with the scaffolding.
It's an odd experience visiting places like this - do you smile for pictures? For me, it was important to get pictures with us in them - Egan won't remember this trip, but he will be able to look back and think "I've been there."
Scattered around the park are shrines dedicated to different groups of people. I believe this was specifically for all the children workers who were in the blast area that day. I didn't ever know this, but the Japanese government employed their students to work as part of the war effort. That day, several groups were demolishing buildings to create fire breaks in the event of an air raid.
This was the children's shrine. Surrounding it are crates stuffed with origami cranes.
There are literally thousands of cranes in these crates. These chains of folded cranes are sent or brought from all over the world.
This is the Peace Flame. It's supposed to look like two hands open to the sky. It has burned continuously since 1964 and will continue to burn until there is no more threat of nuclear weapons.
The Memorial Cenotaph - it contains a scroll with all of the names of those killed by the a-bomb. It sits at one end of the Pond of Peace and you can see several monuments line up through it.
And this was the museum - it was sobering. Half of the museum was under construction and evidently it was the half that shows the lead-up to the bomb dropping. I think it would have helped to have seen a bit more, because we walked into "the bomb has dropped, people are dead/dying/fatally burned and now the city is on fire." It was a little overwhelming.
We visited a few of the other monuments on our way back to the hotel. Overall, I'm happy we visited and I think it is so important that we have these memorials and reminders of the tragic nature of war. Tim and I have somehow found ourselves on a tour of WWII memorials and I would definitely rank this up there with Auschwitz in terms of the brutal honesty of the exhibit.
