The Beautiful Sad City of Hiroshima by Susan Miles

There are days that start with the certain knowledge that what you will see and experience will be confronting, challenging and emotionally disturbing. But something compels you press on regardless. This is the only way I can describe the strange combination of dread and compulsion as I set out one glorious Japanese summer day to explore the beautiful sad city of Hiroshima.

For what otherwise would be remembered as a centuries old Castle town, distinguished by its grand boulevards and gentle flowing canals, crisscrossed with elegant bridges, is known the world over for what occurred at 8.15am August 6, 1945. It was at this precise moment that the first atomic bomb used in an act of war, was dropped by the Enola Gay and detonated 580 meters above the Shima Hospital in the Saiku-machi precinct of Hiroshima.

This terrible legacy is elegantly and poignantly presented by the city in the beautiful statues, memorials and museums within the tranquil surroundings of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Standing in front of the skeletal remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, the sheer luck that this building stubbornly remains standing when the streets around it were reduced to unrecognizable rumble is driven home with a simple black and white photo. This print, dated October 1945, reproduced as part of the historical marker next to the building, is evidence that this world heritage listed site has been expertly preserved in its damaged, but still standing, state. This is now known as “The A-Bomb Dome” in honor of the exposed steel supports that capture the shape of the destroyed dome-like feature of the building. It also a symbol of the resilience of the people of Hiroshima, to also remain standing despite the terrible destruction that befell their city.

Nestled a few hundred meters from the A-Bomb Dome, is a simple but confronting memorial. This one remembers the first victims of the atomic bomb. They were the workers who were out in the open that morning, doing the backbreaking work of clearing fire breaks around previously bombed buildings. But these were not Japanese soldiers or adult laborers who were doing this work, but Junior High School students and interned forced laborers. In the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, a small display tells the anguish of the mother of one of these children. She recalls the typical teenage plea of illness that morning from her daughter to avoid going to her assigned worksite. Having to later witness her daughters agonizing and painful death from burns received in the bombing, she laments her words of encouragement to her daughter to do her part for her country rather than allow her to stay at home that fateful day.

Children feature heavily in the displays and memorials that make up the precinct of the Peace Memorial Park. For in addition to this memorial, is an elegant statue to the most famous of child victims of the blast, Sadako. Her name may not be familiar, but the story of her paper cranes is known the world over. A victim of leukemia approximately a decade after the bombing, her undertaking to fold a 1000 paper cranes, in order to grant her wish of a recovery, remained incomplete upon her death. But like the children who took up her challenge and finished her cranes after her death, school children from all over Japan and in deed the world, continue until this day to fold cranes to honor her memory.

At the base of her statue, glass encased display booths, hold the colorful cranes that continue to arrive daily from school groups, and youth clubs from every corner of the globe. This rainbow of color is a joyful display to a courageous little girl who although long gone, continues to aspire the youth of today to the simple word picked out in cranes in one of the countless offerings within the booths, “Peace”.

But children were not the only victims of the blast. Unique to the attack, the victims were both soldiers and civilians, citizens of Japan and its enemies, the aged and the yet unborn. Whether they died on August 6th , 1945 or in the interceding years, their names are added annually to the records held within the crypt bordering the reflective pool surrounding an eternal flame. This memorial appears in the sweeping boulevard leading up to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

In this museum, along with historical records, photos and displays of Hiroshima both before and after the bombing, are pitiful displays of burnt personal belongings and the stories of their owners. A scorched school book, a damaged watch, a burnt cloth bag or a lone blackened button sit along side a short story of the victim, their family and the repeated tragic tale of an agonising and painful death without access to medical help or comfort.

What is missing from the museum is more than a handful of photographs of the immediate carnage. Those who did record a few images in the immediate hours and days after the bombing tell of the sheer horror that they witnessed that was too painful to point a camera at.

The city of Hiroshima takes its position as the world’s reminder of the impact of nuclear and atomic devastation with a resigned yet unwavering commitment. This is no more visual than in the paneled floor to ceiling wall display within one corner of the memorial museum.

Each time a government anywhere in the world conducts a nuclear test, the Mayor of Hiroshima, sends on behalf of his/her citizens a letter of protest to that nations leader. The letter always end with this statement, "it is our sincere hope that this letter of protest is the last that we will need to send". Over the last 5 decades this ritual has been carried out with alarming regularity, with the history of nuclear testing on this planet captured in these simple letters of protest. It is these hundred letters that make up the panels on this telling and continually growing mosaic on the walls of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.