the tall blond guy goes to japan

Never again

Hiroshima Peace Museum

Did you know? Whenever any country does a nuclear test, the mayor of Hiroshima sends a protest telegram to that country's ambassador to Japan. (They're all on display in the museum)

Did you know? Hiroshima's streetcars were running again a few days after the bomb hit. (Everyone was super-pleased about this one)

Did you know? Walking too much makes my feet hurt. (I passed out in my hotel room this evening)

This museum is a must-see for anyone coming to Hiroshima. The other must-see, a small island called Miyajima Island that some people I met on the train recommended, I didn't have a chance to visit. According to the guide map though (which I just finished reading on the train leaving Hiroshima) it's one of the three prettiest places in Japan. Oops. Oh well, next time.

Back to the museum. It's huge. It took me about 2 1/2 hours to see it all, and I skipped the basement, where they keep all kinds of relics from the bomb. Enterance fee is only Y50! That's about 60 cents Canadian, folks. Very very cheap!

They have two models of Hiroshima- one before the bomb, and one immediately after.

Red ball is the boom-spot. Note absense of anything.

The bomb exploded about 400m above the city, and it flattened everything within a good 30 minute walk. Everything else burned to the ground. The new city hall, pride of the entire area for its archetectural style, burned hotter than an oven. Even after the fire went out, no one could enter for days. It remained structurally intact though. The city was there one minute, and gone the next. What was once the centre of town became a desert of rubble and dead bodies.

After all the exibits, all the dioramae, all the medical data, I think the thing that affected me the most was at the very end- they had videoed accounts of some of the survivors. They told the story of that morning, what they were doing, what they saw and how they reacted. Their stories of the bomb. Everyone who saw the initial flash described it as being "very beautiful".

A woman who was attending school at the time remembers a classmate at the window saying "Look! How pretty!" Then the building came down.

A woman working in her backyard remembers looking up, seeing this beautiful light, then waking up to find her house missing, along with the houses of all her neighbors.

Other people talk of being able to see faraway islands from the main train station.

The strange thing about Hiroshima, compared with the rest of Japan, is that there is no old stuff. Every other Japanese city I've been in has been filled with temples, old buildings, little windey streets and aincient stones. One of the most impressive parts about the Hiroshima story is how the city managed to rebuild itself after being nearly completely wiped out after the bomb. The city planners decided to make all new streets, in a grid pattern. They also decided to make one very wide street, to be called Heiwaodori, or "Peace Street". Cities from all over the world donated trees to be planted along the sides of this street.

Did you know? The most popular comment in the guest book, the same thing in dozens of languages: "never again".