The first sight that greeted us in the park was the broken remains of a building which was the closest to the explosion to remain standing, now known as the A-Bomb Dome. The bomb was aimed for a bridge but detonated about 600m above a hospital. It was set to detonate at that level to cause the maximum amount of damage.
We then met a lovely Japanese lady called Yamaoka Michiko. Her mother was a surviver of the bombing as she was in the countryside when the bomb dropped. Her mothers' sister was found in Hiroshima a couple of days after that and died after a few more days. Yamaoka said her mother was now not able to tell her story so she had taken on this duty and offered free tours to visitors [EDIT: I've since been in touch with Yamaoka who passed me this link and said she would like to guide anyone else who is visiting Hiroshima]. She took us to a graveyard which had been moved since the bombing and showed us how the parts of the gravestones which were in shadow were still smooth while the other parts had been roughened by the heat from the blast.
Yamaoka left us near the Children's Peace Memorial. The statue is based on Sadako Sasaki and was half surrounded by booths containing thousands of paper cranes in different coloured papers, some were arranged to spell 'Peace'.
We then passed the Peace Flame and the Memorial Cenotaph. Stored in the Cenotaph are the names of all the victims of the bomb. Looking through the arch of the cenotaph, which Yamaoka told us was based on the shape of a traditional Japanese home, you can look back on the Memorial Flame and the A-Bomb Dome.
Elsewhere in the park we also saw a Memorial Mound which houses the ashes of some unidentified victims and a Peace Bell which visitors are encouraged to ring.
Bell bonging done it was off to Miyajima.
I emailed Yamaoke to thank her for being our guide. She responded and asked if I could tell others about the free guide service. She passed this link to me which contains a very sad story from the mother of the founder of the free guides and some contact details.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sauerburger.org/dona/mito
When I was at the memorial park, there were school children offering the origami cranes. The chanted what I presume were prayers and then sang before making the offering... I sat on the kerb with a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye. That day in Hiroshima had quite an effect on me.
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