Hiroshima Trip

During my second year in Korea, I began writing a column about my adventures for The Chautauqua, a Central Alberta newspaper. The stories I wrote about Korea will appear on "What The Kimchi?" while my adventures outside Korea will appear here.
First up is my trip to Hiroshima.

Hiroshima: City of Peace (February 15, 2002 Chautauqua)

Being an English teacher in Korea offers many opportunities to travel throughout South-East Asia. There are many cheap package tours available, but you have to book early. Most Koreans love to travel, and prepare well in advance.
My trip to the Japanese city of Hiroshima began in the Korean port of Pusan, the country's second largest city. I took the ferry from there to the port of Fukuoka, on one of Japan's smaller islands. You board the ferry at about 6:00 in the evening, and set sail almost immediately. The ferry arrives some time during the night, but anchors outside the harbour until next morning. Seeing the full moon rise over the Sea of Japan, while you are in the middle of a fishing fleet whose lights stretch to the horizon and beyond, is quite a sight.
Japan is an expensive country to travel in, but the trains are very fast. Hiroshima itself has an antiquated, but efficient, trolley car system that will carry you anywhere inside the city at a reasonable price. There are many sights to see, including the castle and some beautiful parks.

The main sight is, of course, the Peace Park which preserves memorials to the many victims of the atomic bomb dropped on the city on August 6, 1945. I'm not sure I can do justice to the place, so I will just try to describe what was there. The first stop was a memorial to the "Mobilized Students". These kids were taken out of school to help with repairing any bomb damage, and to do road work, and help with the defenses in case the Americans landed. Quite a few were involved in various tasks when the event happened.

Just to the north is the A-bomb Dome, which anyone will recognize from pictures they might have seen of this city. It used to be the prefecture office building, and is close to Ground Zero. The Japanese have spared no effort to keep it as close to what it looked like after that day.

There were a lot of foreigners around, of course, but there were also a lot of school kids being herded through on school trips. It's good to think that they are being kept informed about what happened there. Let's hope they learn the lesson.

Across the river is the Peace Park, which is chock-a-block with memorials to the various types of individuals who were affected by the blast. There is a flame, which will be extinguished when the last bomb is destroyed, and a cenotaph containing a list of all the victims' names. There are places for those who wish to remember and pray, and there were quite a few who were taking advantage.

The culmination of the tour is the museum, which contains detailed exhibits about life in the city from its founding to the present day. There were pieces of the city preserved for display, and quite a lot of the stuff was close enough to touch. There was a step taken from the front of a bank building with the shadowy outline of whoever was waiting for it to open that morning permanently burned into the stone. Eerie.

The most pathetic displays were the personal possessions (including clothes) of the victims. The descriptions were mournfully the same. These people were going about their daily lives when it happened. What is left shows us how they lived, and how they died. It is a sobering moment to see a child's lunchbox, the lid pushed back, with nothing but ashes inside. So many of the displays speak of people finding this stuff later, with nothing else left to mourn or bury. Sad.
After that experience, I took the time to relax in one of the cities many parks. On a hill overlooking the city, I had the chance to wind down, think a bit, and realize that life does indeed go on. It may be trite, but to put into words all of the feelings that went through my mind that day is very difficult. You had to (and we all should) be there.