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shirenomadIt's a bit of a given that a visit to the Peace Museum will put you in a sobering mood. I'm not really going to talk about the exhibits inside; in most cases, a description just won't cut it. I did find one thing especially interesting, though: they had two pillars covered with small plate copies of telegrams. Evidently, whenever a country does a nuclear warhead test, the mayor of Hiroshima sends a telegram of protest (maybe email, now) to the government in question. (Judging by the dates, the last update to the pillars was in late August, so North Korea's first protest hasn't been added yet.) Obviously, the telegrams aren't stopping testing very efficiently, but it's hopefully at least serving as a bit of a reminder to world leaders not to fire off those warheads casually. (Then again, I think M.A.D. is at least equally effective in that respect...)
After the museum, we walked around the park outside. The easternmost point of the park is the bridge that was the Enola Gay's intended "bullseye." (Ironically, it's still standing; the bomb missed by about 100 meters and the blast mostly traveled up and out, so anything rising above the ground was completely demolished but the bridge just got its guard rails melted off.) Nearby is the "Atom Bomb Dome," a former commerce building that somehow also remained standing despite its proximity to the epicenter. Its new name is due to the copper dome that topped it... now melted away except for the twisted framework. It's been preserved as is and remains the only surviving building in the city to predate the war -- the other survivors were all torn down due to damage -- though it's hardly safe to enter.
The park also had multiple monuments, including the famed Children's Memorial (if you've read the story of Sadako, you'll know why it depicts a girl carrying a paper crane) and the central cenotaph with the list of victims. Actually, I hope I don't sound too crass for saying so, but in a few cases the park seemed to go a bit overboard with the number of statues and so forth. Maybe I'd just been pumped too full of it in the museum already and was feeling overloaded. But regardless, I'm hoping that when the inevitable memorial goes into place at Ground Zero, NYC, we keep it simple and tasteful. The strongest reaction I ever felt from a memorial came from the stark simplicity of a certain obsidian wall in DC.
After the museum, we walked around the park outside. The easternmost point of the park is the bridge that was the Enola Gay's intended "bullseye." (Ironically, it's still standing; the bomb missed by about 100 meters and the blast mostly traveled up and out, so anything rising above the ground was completely demolished but the bridge just got its guard rails melted off.) Nearby is the "Atom Bomb Dome," a former commerce building that somehow also remained standing despite its proximity to the epicenter. Its new name is due to the copper dome that topped it... now melted away except for the twisted framework. It's been preserved as is and remains the only surviving building in the city to predate the war -- the other survivors were all torn down due to damage -- though it's hardly safe to enter.
The park also had multiple monuments, including the famed Children's Memorial (if you've read the story of Sadako, you'll know why it depicts a girl carrying a paper crane) and the central cenotaph with the list of victims. Actually, I hope I don't sound too crass for saying so, but in a few cases the park seemed to go a bit overboard with the number of statues and so forth. Maybe I'd just been pumped too full of it in the museum already and was feeling overloaded. But regardless, I'm hoping that when the inevitable memorial goes into place at Ground Zero, NYC, we keep it simple and tasteful. The strongest reaction I ever felt from a memorial came from the stark simplicity of a certain obsidian wall in DC.
