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skyringThe drizzle began as we looked out of the Peace Memorial Museum down the vista and across the Motoyasu River to the A-Bomb Dome.
I'd kept my own tears on the inside - barely - but the day cried for me. Tears from the clouds, falling softly down from the piece of sky where the atomic bomb exploded sixty years ago and the age of nuclear war began.
We have so far avoided the holocaust predicted so many times since that day, but again and again I looked at the photographs of the destruction of a city and its people, and thought that although the images were black and white, the exact same scenes could be repeated today in colour captured on digital cameras and cellphones.
Atomic weapons have become no less dreadful since that day. Quite the reverse. The horror of Hiroshima could be repeated, and I tried to imagine how it would be if instead of those odd foreign names it was my own Canberra streets, suburbs, friends and family.
The tales of the survivors were scattered through the museum, in the exhibits, on computer databases, in captions under photographs in stark black and white. They spoke of finding loved ones horribly maimed. Or dead. Or pieces of the dead. Or nothing at all save for a lunchbox or a sandal.
How would I feel if I had nothing left of my children but a scrap of clothing or a schoolbook?
Bleak and grey was the sky above the cherry trees in full bloom that morning. Cari and I walked together down a riverside avenue, the blossoms a pink canopy above groups of people having merry picnics - hanami. A tradition to take the family or a group of workmates to the parks and wait for a cherry blossom to bless your drink.
A pink tourist boat glided past, a cloud of bubbles emerging from a hidden generator near the stern. Blossoms and bubbles, parks and picnics. Life goes on.
Life went on after the bomb, the exhibits showed us. Reconstruction and repopulation followed, and today's city of Hiroshima is as bright and bustling as ever. a few memorials, a few more or less undamaged buildings. The famous Peace Dome surrounded by rubble, carefully maintained. And all around is the urban landscape of a typical Japanese city, postwar construction as far as the eye can reach through the haze.
As life returned, death lingered in the radiation-scarred environment, in the story of Sadako, struck down by leukemia ten years after the explosion. Her tragic story has inspired people around the world, and their tributes flow in by the thousands, by the millions, in memory of the thousand origami cranes she folded in the hope that her wish for a return to health would come true. It didn't, but the hopes and wishes remain, as do some of her cranes carefully preserved in the museum. The paper cranes are sent in by children from around Japan and around the world and are displayed in glass cases backing her memorial. I found a garland of white cranes from the Gleeson Catholic College in Adelaide. Others were arranged into patterns and messages. "Peace" said one i n the shape of a dove. "No War" said another.
And every so often the cranes are gathered up and recycled into bookmarks and notebooks. I bought a couple, to use in special books.
I'd kept my own tears on the inside - barely - but the day cried for me. Tears from the clouds, falling softly down from the piece of sky where the atomic bomb exploded sixty years ago and the age of nuclear war began.
We have so far avoided the holocaust predicted so many times since that day, but again and again I looked at the photographs of the destruction of a city and its people, and thought that although the images were black and white, the exact same scenes could be repeated today in colour captured on digital cameras and cellphones.
Atomic weapons have become no less dreadful since that day. Quite the reverse. The horror of Hiroshima could be repeated, and I tried to imagine how it would be if instead of those odd foreign names it was my own Canberra streets, suburbs, friends and family.
The tales of the survivors were scattered through the museum, in the exhibits, on computer databases, in captions under photographs in stark black and white. They spoke of finding loved ones horribly maimed. Or dead. Or pieces of the dead. Or nothing at all save for a lunchbox or a sandal.
How would I feel if I had nothing left of my children but a scrap of clothing or a schoolbook?
Bleak and grey was the sky above the cherry trees in full bloom that morning. Cari and I walked together down a riverside avenue, the blossoms a pink canopy above groups of people having merry picnics - hanami. A tradition to take the family or a group of workmates to the parks and wait for a cherry blossom to bless your drink.
A pink tourist boat glided past, a cloud of bubbles emerging from a hidden generator near the stern. Blossoms and bubbles, parks and picnics. Life goes on.
Life went on after the bomb, the exhibits showed us. Reconstruction and repopulation followed, and today's city of Hiroshima is as bright and bustling as ever. a few memorials, a few more or less undamaged buildings. The famous Peace Dome surrounded by rubble, carefully maintained. And all around is the urban landscape of a typical Japanese city, postwar construction as far as the eye can reach through the haze.
As life returned, death lingered in the radiation-scarred environment, in the story of Sadako, struck down by leukemia ten years after the explosion. Her tragic story has inspired people around the world, and their tributes flow in by the thousands, by the millions, in memory of the thousand origami cranes she folded in the hope that her wish for a return to health would come true. It didn't, but the hopes and wishes remain, as do some of her cranes carefully preserved in the museum. The paper cranes are sent in by children from around Japan and around the world and are displayed in glass cases backing her memorial. I found a garland of white cranes from the Gleeson Catholic College in Adelaide. Others were arranged into patterns and messages. "Peace" said one i n the shape of a dove. "No War" said another.
And every so often the cranes are gathered up and recycled into bookmarks and notebooks. I bought a couple, to use in special books.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 12:53 pm (UTC)I enjoyed your descriptions of the cherry blossom and pink boats.
Are you coming to the Stammy next Tuesday then?
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 01:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 02:01 pm (UTC)It was a long and thoughtful day, and I was blessed with a wonderful guide.
Not all sad, and my heart leapt to see the cherry blossoms, but definitely a day I will always remember.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 02:00 pm (UTC)The same thing is happening now.
Me too
Date: 2006-04-07 07:45 am (UTC)Funnily enough Skyring, the day you were in peace Park, there was a TV show about that bombing and what that little girl (Now a woman obviously) is doing now. You wouldn't know from looking at her that she suffered so very much.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 10:52 pm (UTC):)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-05 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-05 03:00 pm (UTC)As I said, the sky cried for me, and all I could write in the visitors book were those two words of French.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-05 05:19 am (UTC)Pete, you have such a gift for including your reader into your experiences. Thank you for letting me be one of them.