The reality of Hiroshima

Today was a big day. We met our personal guide, Hisashi, in our hotel lobby before heading out on a day that would include the Hiroshima Peace Museum in the morning along with other important sites in relation to the atomic bomb. And then the afternoon would be a boat ride to explore the sacred Miyajima Island.

Hisashi was great and very knowledgeable. He had been texting me for days to tailor the schedule to our needs as well as the tides so we could get the best possible experience.

Hisashi took us on a quick tram ride to the start of the peace park that leads to the museum. Tram he explained, and not subway, because 300 years ago the city of Hiroshima would have been in the ocean. The city was built after Japan filled in part of the sea to create enough land upon which to build. As a result, Hiroshima is one of the few major Japanese cities to be without a subway because digging one wasn’t really an option.

Our first stop was the atomic bomb dome. But first, some historical context.

The atomic bomb dome, one of the few buildings left standing after the attack.

The dome before the city was destroyed.

On August 6, 1945, American forces dropped the first atomic bomb in history on Hiroshima. The bomb was detonated about 500m above the ground, creating an intense fireball that caused the surrounding air to burn at more than 3000C. Homes and businesses were immediately flattened by the blast wave. Then, everything burned. Fatality numbers vary depending on who does the counting. Some plaques around the park say 200,000 lives. Hisashi said the currently accepted figure is closer to 140,000. Up to 70,000 men, women and children lost their lives in the initial blast. A further 70,000 died in the weeks and months that followed from injuries sustained during the bombing, radiation sickness or cancers that developed afterwards. Victims were not just those in Hiroshima that day. Anyone who entered the city up to a couple of weeks after the bombing to render aid or search for loved ones is also considered a victim given their potential exposure to radiation.

The first site we visited was the atomic bomb dome, a building destroyed in the blast but preserved by the authorises as a reminder. Hisashi explained as few as 18 buildings in the entire city were left standing after the bombing. The majority of structures were wood. Those that weren’t levelled by the initial blast simply burned in the ensuing 3000C+ temperatures. The buildings left standing, like the dome, were of rare concrete construction.

This bridge across the river was the intended target of the bomb.

Only concrete buildings were left

The dome has been patched up and reinforced over the years to protect it from earthquake damage. You can’t go near it, although Hisashi said he was able to enter the structure as a boy while the authorities debated whether to demolish or preserve the building.

The dome sits on the banks of the Motoyasu River. A nearby bridge with a distinctive T-intersection design was the intended target for the bomb because it was easily identified from the air. They missed. Instead, the bomb detonated 500m above a hospital some 200m away. A clinic was rebuilt at the site in the years after the bomb but there is no grand memorial to mark the hypocentre. A single monument stands on the street, walked past by hundreds of tourists without ever realising the relevance of that spot.

Blink and you’ll miss it - the site of the hypocentre.

We continued our walk along the river. Picturesque today and almost Parisian with the numerous bridges along its length. Dad has said to me previously Hiroshima is the Paris of Japan. I see it. In 1945, however, the river was a scene of devastation. Hisashi explained that those who survived the initial explosion were covered in burns, exposed to ongoing heat and desperate for water. Survivors flocked to the river in an attempt to cool themselves. Authorities spent days retrieving bodies from the waterways. Stretchers on display in the Peace Museum were not used to transport survivors. They went back and forth from the river to collect bodies.

A huge chunk of stone from the dome building sits alongside the river, with many mistaking it for a bench. Hisashi said the blast in 1945 flung the slab into the river. Years later, a local man saw something in the water and dredged it up. It sits where he left it because the government has no legal right to throw it away. It belongs to the man by way of salvage rights and h less he gives permission it cannot be moved.

Not a bench.

A student memorial stands close to the dome in honour of the young people who died in Hiroshima during the bombing. With so many men deployed with the army students were called in to refill the local workforce. Many students in Hiroshima were working throughout the city to create firebreaks as protection against bombings. They were incinerated immediately.

We wandered a little further down the river before crossing a bridge and heading to the Children’s Peace Memorial. Do you remember the story of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. We learned the story at school. The kids knew of it and Teneille said she still teaches it. It is the true story of a young g Japanese girl, Sadako, who survived the Hiroshima bombing only to develop leukaemia as a result of her radiation exposure. Inspired by a Japanese legend that anyone who folds a thousand origami paper cranes will be granted a wish, Sadako attempted the feat. She folded cranes day and night, at home and through her treatment in hospital. Sadako was two years old when the bomb dropped. She died in hospital aged 12. She folded 1300 cranes before her death.

Sadako atop the memorial.

Thousands of cranes sent from across the globe to the Children’s Peace Memorial.

Sadako’s story inspired authorities to create the Children’s Peace Monument in honour of the child victims of the bombing. Sadako stands atop the monument holding aloft a paper cranes. A bell within the monument can be rung by anyone who visits and Perspex storage boxes surround the statue where paper cranes sent from schools all over the world are stored. Once the boxes are full the cranes are taken and recycled into souvenirs and other items. We saw a number of school groups visiting the monument in our short time there.

Across the road from the children’s monument is a building that looks, at first glance, to be a stock-standard souvenir shop and cafe. The basement, however, reveals it to be something more. A kimono shop at the time of the bombing, the building is the only site that close to the hypocentre to have recorded a survivor. Just one. An employee emerged unscathed after going to the basement to find a document he needed. It was at that moment the bomb detonated. He emerged from the basement unscathed to find hell on his doorstep and his co-workers shredded or vaporised.

The charred foundations of the basement where the sole survivor emerged.

After seeing the basement where wooden beams forming part of the buildings foundation remain charred, we walked through the peace park towards the museum proper. We stopped briefly at the memorial which contains the names of all the victims. A list of names which is still being added to today as more survivors come forward. Hisashi explained anyone in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing or who entered directly afterwards had a stigma attached to them for a long time. People didn’t understand radiation sickness or the illnesses that could spring from exposure. When authorities started trying to properly log victims many did not come forward for fear of being ostracised. Hisashi said his family experienced that secrecy on a personal level when his wife developed thyroid cancer. It followed her brother developing the same cancer. To their knowledge none of their family had been around Hiroshima at the time of the bombing but their doctors urged them to ask his wife’s parents. Her father, it turned out, had been tasked with entering Hiroshima days after the bombing. As the stigma took hold in the following months and years he kept that fact hidden. Another victim added to the list decades later.

The memorial of names looks straight through to the dome at one end and the museum through the other.

We entered the museum next and briefed the kids that they would see some disturbing things and it was ok if they chose to keep their eyes lowered at certain points. The museum is confronting to say the least. It contains various artefacts from the bombing like melted bottles, warped metal, clothes and more. But it is the photographs from the aftermath and first-person accounts that stay with you. People wandering the wreckage of the city in a daze, faces burned beyond recognition. Far too little medical aid being rendered to so many. Skin hanging from people’s bodies as it peeled off from the burns. Clothing on display was burned and still covered in blood. There was even the remnants of steps from a bank where someone had been sitting waiting for it to open when the bomb detonated. They were so close to the hypocentre they were vaporised but the shadow of where they’d been sitting remained. It was truly harrowing.

The shadow where someone had been sitting when the bomb exploded.

Faded with time but the shadow is still visible.

We went thought the museum far quicker than I wanted to but we had a boat reservation to Miyajima Island. The last section of the museum was more about the science and the politics behind the bombing. Hisashi explained the Hiroshima bomb carried about 60kg of uranium but just 800g actually reacted in the explosion. All this destruction with just 1.33 per cent reaction of nuclear material.

standing.

Clothes from the child workers who were caught on the blast.

Cemeteries were one of the few things to survive because graves were marked with stone.

A bunch of glass bottles melted together from the heat of the blast.

Hisashi said he had done this tour a number of occasions with American tourists. He said no-one ever apologised. I’m not sure I agree they should to a point. But Hisashi says they always bring up Pearl Harbour as justification. I draw a line there. Some 2400 lives lost - most military personnel - at a strategic military base during a war-time raid is not the same as the annihilation of an entire city of people going about their lives and 140,000 men, women and children dead. Those two things are not the same. Not even close. And let’s not forget the second bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima which claimed another 80,000 lives.

A three-year-old boy was outside riding his bike when the bomb went off. He died begging for water.

Hiroshima is a beautiful city but it is also extremely confronting. Why can people live there? Where is the radiation? Hiroshima differs from somewhere like Chernobyl in a couple of ways. First, the bomb was detonated at altitude which dispersed a lot of the radioactive material into the atmosphere where it passed quickly. Secondly, the radioactive material used had a very short half life as opposed to the Chernobyl reactor meltdown which involved material with a long half life. Those two things meant Hiroshima was safe to inhabit within a matter of weeks following the bomb.

I will do the island as a separate post - this one is far too long already.