Hiroshima (part 2): A moving and very dignified remembrance

Hiroshima Cenotaph

I split this post into two parts, because it's not a subject that I feel can or should be constrained by the size of a blog posting. The first part was posted yesterday.

 

Just a short distance away from the hypocentre of the bomb, the city has created a permanent reminder of its past. The old centre was devastated by the blast and fire, and they decided not to rebuild there, but to use that area as the focus for remembrance.

A-Bomb Dome, Hiroshima

The Peace Memorial Park is a large and very pleasant area. Close by is the A-Bomb Dome, the skeletal remains of the Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, which is the only building that remained standing close to the hypocentre. It is a striking image of the power of the blast, and acts as a permanent link to the past, and to the events of that terrible day.

National Peace Memorial Hall, Hiroshima

The park itself contains the Peace Memorial Museum, the National Peace Memorial Hall and the Cenotaph to the A-bomb victims. All three are important.

The Cenotaph is a beautiful memorial, and contains a chest with a register of the names of all those who died as a result of the bomb; there are over 220,000 names.

 

National Peace Memorial Hall, Hiroshima

The National Peace Memorial Hall, which was opened in August 2002, is an interesting way to honour those who died. Inside there is a slope taking you down to the Hall of Remembrance, where the walls show a depiction of the city after the bombing, as seen from Shima Hospital, the hypocentre of the blast. The panels are made up of 140,000 tiles, which is the number if people who had died by the end of 1945. The monument in the centre represents the time of the bomb, 8:15am.

Above ground, another memorial depicts the same time, and is surrounded by fountains, which commemorate the way that so many victims died crying out for water.

 

Miyoko's sandal, Hiroshima

But the really impressive place to visit is the Peace Memorial Museum. I was genuinely moved by it, and could see that most other visitors were too. It tells the story of what happened without any hype or blame. A city that could be incredibly bitter and resentful about what happened, is in fact dignified and conciliatory. The only criticism is of their own government for its part in the war; they level no accusation at the USA or its Allies.

There are some very graphic displays, including models of victims who literally had fat dripping from them where it was melting out of their bodies due to the intensity if the heat they were exposed to. But there is nothing sensationalist or gory about any of the exhibits; they are disturbing of course, but shown in a way that is informative and respectful.

Shigeru's lunchbox, Hiroshima

There is a wooden sandal, or geta, that belonged to 13 year old Miyoko, who was 550m from the hypocentre. Her body was never found, but her mother recognised the kimono fabric that she had used to make the sandal. You can sit just make out the imprint of where her foot was.

Schoolboy Shigeru Orimen never got to eat his lunch on that day, and it charred remains were found in his battered lunch box underneath his remains, about 600m away from the hypocentre.

The tricycle and helmet belonged to Shinichi Tetsutani, almost four, who was playing on them outside his home almost a mile away from the hypocentre. He died that night.

Shinichi's tricycle, Hiroshima

A less graphic, but no less emotional exhibit, was the origami cranes. These were folded by Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old when the bomb went off, and by the age of twelve, she was in hospital with terminal leukaemia caused by radiation. She believed that if she could fold a thousand paper cranes, her wish to recover would be granted. She never made it, and died eight months later.

Sadako Sasaki's Origami Cranes. Hiroshima

Probably the most symbolic pieces for me though, was the stone step, which I posted a photo of yesterday, which has a dark mark on it. That is believed to be where someone was sitting at the time of the blast, The mark is all that remained. That is the power and devastation of an atomic weapon.

Origami Cranes. Hiroshima

And what is important to remember is that only a tiny 2% of the payload of this bomb actually went off. And nuclear weapons these days are far more efficient, powerful and destructive. The museum ends with a request to sign a petition for nuclear disarmament.

Origami Cranes. Hiroshima

Now I am not personally convinced about the feasibility of that, so I feel a little conflicted on this issue. I honestly don't know if believe that a full, worldwide disarmament can ever be achieved.

Regardless of my or your views on that, Hiroshima stands as a plea for peace. And I can't, and don't, argue with that; I certainly would never want to see a weapon like this used again.

Hiroshima (part 1): 220,000 lives lost to a 'Little Boy'

Atomic Blast, Hiroshima

I suspect that if you ask someone to name cities in Japan, then after Tokyo and perhaps Kyoto, many people will find the next city that comes to mind is Hiroshima. Like Chernobyl in the Ukraine, it is one of those places that is infamous rather than famous, and most of us will forever associate the name with the city's past, rather than its present.

I have split this post into two parts, because it's not a subject that I feel can or should be constrained by the size of a blog posting. The second part will be posted tomorrow.

Replica Atomic Bomb, Hiroshima

We really didn't know what to expect of Hiroshima. We knew that there was no ongoing threat from radiation, and that it is a flourishing city, but we didn't know what to expect in terms of the feel of the city, how it deals with its past, and how the people of Hiroshima would feel about visitors.

What we discovered was an amazing city, with great places to eat and drink, and friendly and welcoming locals. In the downtown area, you would have no idea that anything bad had happened here.

The red bomb blast over Hiroshima

But something bad did happen. By the second half of 1945, World War II had ended in Europe, but as a nation famed for the ideal of death before dishonour, the Japanese were showing no sign of surrender. Incendiary bombings in Tokyo had killed over 100,000 people, and it was inevitable that if the war with Japan was to be won, many more thousands would die in the process. If the allies could even win it.



Hiroshima survivors, 2.2 miles away

Reluctant to seek help from the Soviet Union, not wishing to allow a spread of communist influence, and seeing no end in sight through conventional warfare, the USA decided to use its new weapon, the atomic bomb. The aim was to send such a message of strength and superiority to Japan, that it would end the war. As it turned out, it would work.



Clothes and photos of survivors, Hiroshima

I understand the logic of the argument. It may well even be true that the number of deaths in Japan and the surrounding area would have been much higher had the bombs not been dropped. What I'm not so sure about was whether, in this case, the ends really did justify the means.

It isn't a new dilemma in warfare, and it is one we are still facing as we battle against terrorism and the likes of Daesh. It is the kind of decision that is easy to criticise, but must be unbelievably hard to take, and to live with afterwards.



The order to drop the A-bomb, Hiroshima

Right or wrong, the decision was made, and four cities were selected as optimum targets, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura and Niigata. I have to wonder how the people of Kokura and Niigata felt when it was revealed years later that it could have been them instead of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki. It seems Hiroshima may have been favoured because it did not have an allied prisoner of war camp as the others did, but the final selection was made by the weather conditions.



Black rain on a wall, Hiroshima

On 6 August 1945, at 8:15am, the B29 bomber the Enola Gay, dropped the 'Little Boy' atomic bomb, the first in the world, over Hiroshima. The 3m long, 4 ton bomb, contained 50kg of uranium 235, which was designed to react with plutonium to create nuclear fission. When the bomb exploded, some 600m above the city, less than 1 kg of the uranium actually reacted, but that alone caused the kind of damage that would take over 16,000 tons of high performance explosives.

Turned to dust, Hiroshoma

Within a second, the temperature reached over 1 million degrees Celsius, and caused a fireball with a diameter of 280m. The surface temperature rose to 3000-4000 degrees Celsius. The intense heat and blast from the explosion crushed and burned nearly all buildings in a 2km radius. Some 80,000 people were believed to have been killed instantly, some being literally turned to dust.

That very soot and dust, that was now radioactive, was carried into the air, mixed with water vapour, and fell back to earth, covering a much greater area with black, or acid, rain.



Fused glass bottles, Hiroshima

The heat of the blast can be seen by the way that glass bottles fused together. The ones in the photo were 1800m away from the blast, and the four year old child who lived next door, died the next day.

The heat was also visible in the photo of the water tap, the shadow of which was imprinted onto the wall next to it by the intensity of the heat and light.

Imprinted shadow, Hiroshima

The radiation from the blast severely affected anyone within 1km of the hypocentre, and most died within a few days. Those that didn't, or were further away still suffered the effects of the radiation. There were around 350,000 people living in and around Hiroshima in 1945.




Fingernails that keep growing, Hiroshima

Some 140,00-160,000 were dead by the end of the year, and the register of the dead, contained in the memorial, holds over 220,000 names of victims. Many others suffered horrible effects throughout the rest of their lives.

Kanchanaburi and the Death Railway

Having crossed into Thailand, we were almost at the end of our Dragoman trip; Kanchanaburi was our only stop before reaching our final destination of Bangkok.

The town itself was nice enough, with some reasonable places to eat, but the main reason to go to the Death Railway Museum, and to visit the nearby and infamous Bridge over the River Kwai.

If you've seen the film of the same name, you'll probably know that the bridge was built during World War II under the command of the Japanese, using the labour of the allied forces prisoners of war. You may also know how terribly badly these men were treated, with many dying from such things as malnutrition, exhaustion cholera, malaria and dysentery, as well as those killed directly by the Japanese.

What you may not know, is that in fact the POWs were much fewer, and better treated, compared to the rest of the labourers who had been brought in from nearby countries.

Reported numbers vary a little, but around 61,811 POWs (30,131 British, 13,004 Australian, 17,990 Dutch and 680 US) were forced to work on the Death Railway, and 12,621 of them (6,904 British, 2,802 Australian, 2,782 Dutch and 133 US) died before the war was over. Many of the Dutch were in fact from the Dutch East Indies, and so they - and importantly the medics amongst them - were more used to the tropical diseases encountered here, which helped their survival rate compared to other nationalities.

The number of POWs though was dwarfed though by that of the Romusha. The Japanese brought in Asian workers from Burma, Thailand other areas such as The Malay Peninsula and Singapore. Some of these men volunteered, having been promised good conditions and good wages, but many were coerced or even simply rounded up and taken. Either way, their working conditions were even worse that that of the POWs.

The number of romusha workers used is unknown, but many sources estimates around 150,000, with 90,000 of them having died; however some sources suggest that numbers may have been as high as 300,000, with as many as half of them dying.

The construction of the 285 mile (415km) length railway, stretching from Ban Pong in Thailand to Thanbyuzayat in Burma, went across incredibly difficult terrain. It was built to provide an alternative route to take supplies into Burma, which had recently been taken by the Japanese. Work commenced, using just hand tools and hard labour, in June 1942 and finished ahead of schedule, on 17 October 1943.

We visited the Death Railway Museum, the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, and Bridge 277, or the 'Bridge Over the River Kwai', which more accurately spans the Mae Klong river.

The railway was decommissioned after the war, and the bridge itself was partly destroyed by the Allied forces in 1945, but it has been rebuilt, enabling us to walk across it. I like the idea of it being kept as a memorial to the men who died building the railway, so I was pleased that we would be visiting here.


Unfortunately, as with too many places, there is too much focus on tourism, where it should be on memorial. There is a restaurant overlooking the bridge, and countless souvenir shops peddling all sorts of tacky items. Personally, I would have preferred that this be a place of quiet contemplation, with the emphasis on remembrance.