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Over this last weekend (December 7th and 8th), the exchange students on our programme at Osaka University took part in a mandatory field trip to the city of Hiroshima. Though I’m not much of a history buff, the insights and experiences from this trip were invaluable in deepening my interest in, and understanding of, the bombing that happened here on August 6th, 1945.
We set off on the coach from our university dorms in Osaka at 7:30am on Saturday, arriving in Hiroshima at 2pm. Firstly, we walked through the Memorial Park, catching glimpses of some of the monuments and the trees in the last moments of their beautiful autumnal palettes (the reds and yellows of the leaves here in Japan are much more intense than in the UK!), before arriving at a small, underground, bunker-like building.
Here we attended a talk by Teruko Yahata – a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima almost 80 years ago. She was 8 years old the day the bomb and lost family members to the attack. Within her testimony, she described all the burn victims she saw walking the streets of Hiroshima, accompanied by horrifying artworks displayed on the boards; and how she and all those around her struggled to survive, find necessities, and recover their everyday lives in the aftermath of the bombing.
She also discussed her thoughts on how to memorialise what happened, the people who lost their lives and maintain their legacies, and what we should do about nuclear arms today. I found the talk very insightful and emotional, and appreciated being able to hear her first-hand account of what I had previously only heard about in history lessons. It helped me to understand the gravity of what happened and especially the human level impacts of nuclear arms.
After this, we visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Here we saw many photos showing Hiroshima before and after the bomb was dropped, showing the destruction to buildings, as well as the human costs. For example, the walls displayed photographs and paintings of people, including children, with severe (almost certainly unsurvivable) burns, a melted tricycle belonging to a 3-year-old child killed in the bombing, and a shadow on a set of stone stairs left from where a person was vapourised.
These were shocking and disturbing to see, especially the destroyed or mangled belongings of the children who died, and the pieces of victims’ bone melted into the metal, but it gave a strong and moving visual depiction of the human impacts.
On the second day, we first took an early morning walk to the Mt. Mitateyama (牛田山) viewpoint, just 10 minutes on foot from our hotel which was on top of a mountain on the outskirts of Hiroshima. Here we could see the entire city, as well as the surrounding mountains, and watched as the sun rose and left a golden glow on all the buildings.
We then took the bus and returned to the Memorial Park. We were given a few hours to spare before the guided tour the university planned for us at 11. However, we arrived around 9am, whereas everything in Japan tends to only open after 11! We ended up visiting some of the monuments a little further from where the tour would be, including the spot in front of Shima Hospital where the hypocentre of the atomic bomb was, exploding 600m above this point.
The Genbaku (Atomic Bomb) Dome was one of the few buildings near the hypocentre that managed to stay relatively intact; though all the floors and roof were destroyed by the blast, miraculously much of the wall structure of the central part of the building remained.
During the guided tour, we visited some of the other monuments and listened to the stories and explanations provided by our guide. Firstly, we saw the Hiroshima Victims Memorial Cenotaph: an arch inscribed with the names of victims of the bombing. Behind the cenotaph you can see a flame in the central promenade of the Memorial Park which is intended to stay lit until all the nuclear arms in the world are gone (though our guide was not hopeful this would happen anytime soon).
Here we also saw the Children’s Peace Monument, a statue dedicated to all the children who died including Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who initially survived the atomic bomb, but sadly developed leukaemia and passed away from it later. In the photo you can see a number of glass boxes behind the monument: students in the local schools folded many paper cranes, which were put on display in these glass boxes to honour her memory.
Finally, we visited Hiroshima’s Christmas market before beginning the long journey back to Osaka. We were all quite amused at the offerings from the stalls: though the stall design, decorations and music were all quite “Christmassy”, almost all the stalls were selling food completely unrelated to Christmas, such as pizza, nachos and oysters (except one stall selling Glühwein – i.e. mulled wine). This was pretty in line with the stereotypical Japanese Christmas dinner of KFC!