Hiroshima and Miyajima

 Hiroshima today, er, I mean back in May. 

From Tokyo, we took our first Shinkansen ride to Hiroshima.  Except for Amanda, this was a first for everyone, and it was a really interesting experience.

We started off by boarding on the “non-reserved, non-smoking” cars.  You can make seat reservations ahead of time if you know when you’d like to leave.  Since we weren’t 100% sure what time we’d want to leave Tokyo, or how long it would take to get to the correct station/track, we skipped that option.

I wish I’d taken photos of the inside of the train.  It’s very similar to an airplane except that you have a lot more headroom and feels a lot cleaner.  Announcements are made in English and Japanese.  There’s a stewardess or steward with a cart on each train that sells drinks, bento box lunches, and snacks.  Whenever the stewardess or other train employee leaves a car to go to the next one, they turn around and bow to the passengers before exiting.  Can you imagine our airline stewardesses bowing to the cabin every time they exited??

Everyone forms neat lines and waits pretty patiently to board the trains, especially the Shinkansen.  Note how clean both the platform and train are.

The Shinkansen was also our first glimpse into the Japanese countryside.  It is just breathtaking.  There are lots of small villages throughout, and we really didn’t see any uninhabited areas.    Every acre has a purpose and use. 

When we arrived in Hiroshima, we quickly found our hotel, a friendly little hostel just a short walk from the main train station.  It was our only stay in a hostel, and we really enjoyed it.  We opted for the tatami rooms with private bathrooms.  The bathroom was a little cramped and you couldn’t sit on the toilet and close the door at the same time.  I felt sorry for Matt every time he had to squeeze into the little Japanese bathrooms on our trip. 

One night, we all piled into Ryan and Amy’s room to watch that week’s episode of Lost on his laptop.  We had to keep up with the final season!

The employees gave Amanda directions to a local fabric store so that she could collect some swatches for a quilt she wanted to make.  The rest of the group roamed around and happened upon this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant.  It was tucked into a narrow side street of what I imagined old Japan to look like. 

The restaurant was a small room, just big enough for a single hibachi grill.  It was run by an older couple that seemed delighted to have us as patrons.  As we ate, I looked around at the walls and saw photos of all sorts of famous Japanese people eating in that very restaurant.  Baseball players, politicians, and even who I believe were members of the imperial family.  I felt like we’d stumbled upon a rare treasure and soaked it all in.

We devoured our okonomiyaki, a Japanese dish consisting of friend noodles, a pancake-like base, vegetables, and seafood.  Even better than El Paso on 53 with its “Good Food, Yes” sign.

We spent the next day touring the bomb memorials and museum.  We started out in Peace Park, reading the plaques on the monuments and observing the ruins.  We were approached by a woman who volunteers as a guide for the memorial and who gave us a pretty good summary of some of the logistics of the world’s first atomic bombing of an inhabited area.

She spoke of the technical aspects of the bombing (how Hiroshima wasn’t actually the first choice of a target but was doomed by the beautiful weather in the area that day), the time of the bombing (morning, as people are arriving at work and school), location (intersection of two rivers with a very distinctive bridge, an easy landmark for the pilot, in a densely populated area), height of the bomb (a few thousand feet above the ground).  Radar picked up the incoming planes beforehand, but because there were only estimated to be three planes, no alert was issued as it was deemed a non-threat (bombing raids involved high numbers of planes). 

Hiroshima Genbaku Dome today, the only nearby building that survived the bombing.

We learned about the devastating effects of the bomb.  This was not like any other bombing in all of history.  Those that survived the initial blast suffered from health issues years later.  The effects of the bomb lasted through multiple generations. 

There are not many photos of the initial aftermath.  The reporters that were there said that they could not bring themselves to document the complete and total devastation.  The city was a complete wasteland.  Entire communities were wiped out.  Flesh melted off of the victims.  Those who did not die immediately had to survive the resulting city fires, radiation sickness, and even years later were often doomed to cancer and other post-radiation exposure side effects.

One image that stood out to me was of the sole survivor within the epicenter of the bombing.  He had just gone into the basement of the building in which he worked to get some supplies.  The concrete building protected him from the blast.  He felt a shake and a loud noise and when he came up, everyone else was dead and the city was burning.

The dome immediately after the bombing.

Another volunteer guide also spoke to us about the human devastation.  I was very somber and starting to become emotional as we listened to his account of his family’s survival of the bombing.  As he spoke, he flipped through a notebook full of photos.  He pulled out another and was going to show something else to us when we saw a peek at some of the other contents of the book and the other notebooks books in his possession.  It was filled with propaganda against the American military and equated other bombings and even some of Sadaam Husein’s chemical weapon tests/usage on his own people, with the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

That’s when I felt a little used.

I felt like he was purposefully playing our emotions, specifically as Americans, and that if we weren’t Americans, we would’ve gotten a completely different lecture – one filled with a list of accusations of all sorts against the American military and government. 

This was an absolutely devastating bombing.  Seeing the hypocenter in person made me think.  It has made me question the use of atomic weapons.  It made me question some of what I believe about national defense.  It made me weep for the families who lost their loved ones, for the helpless children and nameless victims.

There were virtually no buildings within 2 km (1.24 miles) of the hypocenter that survived the blast.

But what I felt like they did wrongly was that throughout all of the memorials and museum, the Japanese have only documented how they are victims of this terrible bombing.  There was no history of what lead up to the war, no acknowledgment of responsibility for the murder and torture of thousands of Koreans and Chinese, just to name a couple.  There was no remorse for the unwarranted Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that started the war between the two countries in the first place.  There’s no real mention of the Japanese balloon bombs sent over the ocean to kill American civilians.  I felt like all of this was needed to put into context how we ended up in that position in the first place.  That part of history simply isn’t being taught, at least at the memorial it isn’t obvious from what I could tell, and that’s wrong.

We had to wade past hoards of Japanese school children throughout the entire day.  It was an endless sea of students singing peace songs, donating their paper cranes, and visiting the museum.  I think that before and during the war, the Japanese were constantly bombarded with imperialistic propaganda.  They were taught that they were better than all of their Asian neighbors and the country was decidedly pro-war (something that was confirmed by our Edo museum guide, who grew up in that era).  Now, the Japanese are taught from very early on about peace, and how everything must be done to preserve peace.  I think that all Japanese students probably make a pilgrimage to the war museum in Hiroshima so that they can all see the effects of such a horrible bombing first hand. 

I’m not saying that this is all bad.  I just wonder if it’s beneficial to only teach one idea to entire generations (conquer and suppress thy neighbor vs. peace at any cost).  I don’t know how and if atomic bombs should be used again (I haven’t quite figured out how I feel about it), but I do know that the threat of them – whether perceived or legitimate – has also saved lives in some situations (just an observation, not necessarily an endorsement). 

After a very thought-provoking tour of the atomic bomb museum, we headed over to check out more of the city.

We made it just in time to tour the rebuilt Hiroshima castle, but not before finding our first Mr. Donut. 

We were so excited that we all had to go in and feed our nostalgia.  (We had a Mister Donut near our apartment in Osaka and frequented the establishment quite often).

At the castle, we were able to climb out onto the keep on the top floor.  It was about three feet deep and circled the entire floor with a metal cage to keep people from falling off.  My hands got too sweaty from the height and strong breeze (I’m a certified scaredy cat of heights.  I can’t even watch high-altitude action scenes without getting sweaty palms), so I didn’t really get to enjoy the beautiful views. 

My hands are sweating looking at the photo below and remembering that shallow ledge and the distance from the ground. 

You’d bounce at least a couple of times if you fell from there. 

I imagined that I’d probably slip, slide down the second-highest story’s sloped roof, unable to grab a hold of anything to stop my descent, and then roll off the edge of the roof, bouncing off of each lower roof line before finally landing on the castle steps.

Are your hands sweating yet?

No, just me?

The next day we took a ferry out to Miyajima, an island just off of the coast of Hiroshima.  This was one of my favorite days of the whole trip.

Miyajima is a sleepy little island that is only accessible by ferry.  It has a famous Shinto Shrine and is picturesque, thus resulting in it becoming a bit of a tourist trap in some areas. 

View from the ferry, looking at the red Tori gate and Mt. Mismen in the background.

The shrine is a beautiful wooden building built along the shore so that at high tide, it is surrounded by water.

Above is a kabuki stage where plays were performed for the local villagers.  They sat on the facing deck (where I was standing when I took the photo) with the water between them and the stage at high tide.

We decided to hike up to the top of Mt. Mismen, so we walked upward toward the edge of the forest.  I felt like we were in an Indiana Jones movie, hiking through an ancient jungle or something.

The climb up  was extremely steep and definitely gave us a good gluteus maximus workout for the day. 

At the top, there was a lookout post with a very small restaurant/convenience store.  I think I paid $4 for an 8oz drink and we all shared.  There are no roads or ropeways to the top of the mountain, so they have to bring supplies up to the neighboring peak and then carry them up to the very top. 

The views from the ascent were breathtaking.

On our way back down, we took a different route.  Close to the bottom, we came up upon this hidden temple, nestled in the middle of the woods.  It was like finding a lost city.  I wish I had taken more photos of the temple area and buildings; it was like a scene straight out of a samurai movie.

On our way back to the train station, we happened to find a small pottery shop.  It is a third generation shop, complete with potter’s wheel and kiln.  They had rows and rows of beautiful pieces, and I bought several items for myself and as gifts (but could have bought the whole store!).  They hand-wrapped each piece and gave us some print outs with the family shop’s history (in English, no less).

Afterward, Amanda and Wade tried to catch the Hiroshima Carp professional baseball game, but Amy, Ryan, Matt, and I were whipped from all of the hiking and found a cozy little sports bar near our hostel and enjoyed the game on a big screen tv with the locals.  There are some things that we couldn’t understand, but cheering for your home team and cursing out the pitcher when he makes a mistake are pretty universally understood.

The next morning, we headed off to Osaka…