Inside Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
In a recent post, I spoke about nuclear warfare and Jewish law. What is the Jewish take on dropping a nuke bomb? These thoughts brought back memories of my trip to Japan in 2008, where I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
I arrived in the early afternoon in Hiroshima. Today Hiroshima does not look like a nuclear blast site. Hiroshima is a thriving metropolis and a full-on Japanese city. There is a building that remains from the original nuclear blast which has been left standing near the Peace Park as a monument. In and around the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park there are a number of monuments dedicated by various countries and organizations.
What fascinated me most was seeing the documents inside the Peace Memorial Museum that illustrate the communication that lead up to Hiroshima being nuclear bombed.
There are items in the museum that were collected from in and around the blast site, which show the devastating power and heat caused by a nuclear bomb. Temperatures would have been incredibly hot for some things to vaporize and others to fuse together.
I was there on August 6th, which on this day in 1945 The United States dropped an Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima. I did not plan to be there on this day but I was fortunate to take part in the annual Hiroshima Commemoration Ceremony. There was a concert given by schoolchildren, followed by a procession of a few hundred candle bearers. The candles were then placed around the park and left to burn. I found the whole thing surreal. I was not moved emotionally, largely because I did not understand most of what was being said at the time.
I then spent the night sleeping in the Peace Memorial Park on a bench near one of the bathrooms. One of the benches was already occupied by a homeless guy so I figured it to be okay. Also because I had no hotel reservation and I needed a place to stay. It was a beautiful summer night and the hundreds of burning candles reflecting of the water made it so much more enticing to stay there. The park was meticulously clean, there was 24hr open bathrooms, and Japan has a low crime rate. My night spent sleeping outside in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was one of my most pleasant nights.
