Photo of the week: Remembering Hiroshima

The only building left intact following the August 6, 1945 nuclear explosion

A bottle

A child’s piece of clothing

Before and after

From a plaque outside the Hiroshima Museum:

War is the work of man.
War is destruction of human life.
War is death
To remember the past is to commit oneself to the future.
To remember Hiroshima is to abhor nuclear war.
To remember Hiroshima is to commit oneself to peace.

Pope John Paul II

On this second trip to Japan, my husband and I very much wanted to visit Hiroshima.  While our vacation was mostly focused on Kyoto and Osaka, we felt it was important to see this historic city and remember what happened on August 6, 1945.

I was not sure how I would feel upon seeing the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, the building we all know so well as the one the Japanese decided to leave intact following the bomb.   It turned out that the visit to the original bomb site and target, the T-shaped Aioi Bridge – and then the Museum – was as emotional as one would expect.  But it wasn’t it wasn’t the memorials – though they were moving – so much as the Museum.

The Museum in Hiroshima is dedicated to promoting peace and telling the world about the danger of Atomic bombs.  It puts physics and chemistry into laymen’s terms so that every visitor leaves with a firm understanding of what an atomic explosion means.  To demonstrate the city’s commitment to a nuclear-free world, each time a bomb is tested, the mayor sends a letter of protest reminding leaders of the dangers of atomic war. 

Some of the more striking exhibits are relief maps of Hiroshima before and after the bomb, but most stirring are the photographs and exhibits of bottles, clothing and other items that survived the bomb.  And the reminder that atomic bombs today are thousands of times more powerful than the one dropped in August 1945. 

The Museum speaks to the innocent people who died on that day – from women and children to Koreans who were forced to live and work there, far from home – and calls on visitors to listen to the eyewitness testimony of survivors with concern so that their experience is never forgotten. 

I appreciated the Museum’s focus on convincing visitors to help in its quest to educate people of the reality of nuclear war and encourage them to take action when they can.  It was a good reminder for us of what the alternative to peace could be.

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