I make no apology for reposting a post from April when we visited Hiroshima. Today we remember the bomb which devastated Hiroshima seventy years ago, but for the victims, survivors and their families they re-live this day, every day. Sadly, in wars attrocities are committed by all sides and certainly millions of people suffered extreme cruelty at the hands of the Japanese army. However, this was a most terrible price for the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to pay, and I can’t help but wonder whether things could have been done differently to achieve the surrender of Japan, which was being negotiated.
Our day started with a trip into the city, mostly rebuilt after 1945, where the Sakura (cherry blossom) was beginning to come into full bloom.
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 if you were to fold 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.
