We began with the castle, which was devastated in the nuclear bombing. One tower was rebuilt in the 1950’s.
Words cannot adequately describe the feeling of visiting the A-Bomb Dome, Peace Park and Museum, so I’ll let a few of our photographs speak for us. The testimony of the survivors was very moving.
The dome is in the process of being surveyed…
Part of a beautiful cylindrical mosaic inside the memorial. Each tile of the mosaic represents a person who died in the aftermath of the bombing.
A young girl who developed leukaemia following the bombing believed the story that id you folded a thousand paper cranes your wish would come true. As she struggled with her illness she folded over fifteen hundred. Sadly her wish didn’t come true and they were given out at her funeral. They have now become a symbol of peace and every person entering the Memorial is given a tiny paper crane.
It didn’t seem right to take any photographs inside the museum. The reconstuctions reminded me of Oradour sur Glane.
The cranes are so beautiful. What a sad and moving experience for you -- as is this post. Thank you, Gaynor.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be difficult to visit Japan without a visit to Hiroshima or Nagasaki, in the acknowledgement that atrocities were committed on all sides.
DeleteThanks Gaynor...
ReplyDeleteI don't think these things really sink home, even now...
but I often wonder where we would be now if they hadn't been dropped and people hadn't seen the devastation caused.
I am more aware than most after my father told my bro' and I about Nagasaki...
he was a POW slaving in an open cast copper mine just outside when the second bomb went off...
the blast went across the top and the fall out was blown in the opposite direction...
but I often wonder if his brittle bone syndrome that developed in his sixties wasn't linked!
I am sure your father's brittle bones were caused by the blast, Tim. Tom says that at Nagasaki there was a greater acknowledgement of Japan's acts in the war than he saw at Hiroshima, although half of the museum was closed for refurbishment. Your father's story would have been part of that.
ReplyDeleteHe would have been a survivor victim.
A very moving experience and it does us all good to remember that two wrongs don't make a right. The Japanese were hideously cruel to their prisoners of war but the the bomb didn't enhance anybody's standing in the world either.
ReplyDelete