My Visit to Hiroshima

by Chris P. Madden

This past January I had the pleasure of going to Japan for my first time, and visiting the family home of my fiance. They live on the main island, Honshu, about a 3-hour drive from Hiroshima. On my first day in their home, I mentioned that I wanted to visit Hiroshima, and the following Saturday we all made the trek together. My first impression upon driving into the city was it's beauty: lots of trees, rivers, and bridges connecting a very modern city. We were blessed with a sunny 10 degree Celsius afternoon to walk the paths of the Peace Park. The museum itself is now called the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, and is situated in a many-acre parkland devoted to the site. There are hundreds of trees and flowers, and dozens of monuments to witness while walking thru the park. There is the monument to all the children who lost their lives, the statue of the merciful mother and her two children, the Peace Bell, the Peace Fountain, the Eternal Flame of Peace, the merciful goddess of peace called Kannon, and many other statues, cenotaphs and permanent fixtures. The museum used to be called the Hiroshima A-bomb Museum, and the subtle but powerful shift to a focus on peace describes the feeling of the whole area, and the modern Japanese in general. Upon paying 50 cents Canadian to enter the museum, the mood quickly begins to change. The English signs and audio headphones describe a century of Hiroshima's development before WWII, which included a lot of military activity, as we are told of Japan's participation in numerous wars. There is a detailed account of the long lead-up to August 6th, 1945, like some of the reasons why Hiroshima & Nagasaki were chosen, the Manhattan Project, and the complicated physical mechanisms of atomic weapons themselves. Then, upon entering the next section of the museum, the magnitude of the event is made clear, thanks in part to film footage from the 'Enola Gay' B29 bomber that dropped the bomb at 8:15 that Monday morning...

I will share some of the details now:
A 4-ton bomb containing 50 kilograms of Uranium 235 was dropped from the plane directly over the center of the highly-populated city. It was detonated at about 580 meters above ground, releasing the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT, with one deadly difference: radioactivity. Within one tenth of a second it created a sun-burst that was over 1 million degrees Celsius. Shock waves of 35 tons per square meter blasted forth, and within 2 seconds the ground temperature was about 4000 degrees Celsius. The shock waves traveled 11 km within 30 seconds, shattering glass windows up to 27 km from the hypocenter. Everything in between: chaos, destruction, the raging fires of Hell on Earth. Flesh and bone were instantly incinerated within a 1.3km radius of the blast center, and 50 percent of those people died immediately. All of the wooden buildings in the city caught fire, burning day and night, spreading outward from the center, causing massive suffering and dying for days and days, as radioactive "black rain" fell in a 20km radius. Three months later the death toll was about 140,000, and it is still climbing as the survivors deal with the effects of radiation. Three days after Hiroshima, a more destructive bomb was dropped on the less-populated Nagasaki, releasing the equivalent of 21,000 tons of TNT, and releasing another 70,000 souls from this phase of their existence.

Inside the museum I met a volunteer, a survivor of the event, who was 8 years old at the time, Ms. Emiko Okada. She saw the explosion and said she thought that "the sun had fallen out of the sky." She saw thousands of people scrambling, screaming, into the rivers, flesh dripping from their bones, clothing burnt and gone, bleeding, dying, as she saw the river running red with blood, for hours and hours. She herself survived and is firmly dedicated to peace, having personally invited George Bush Jr. to visit the museum just last year. Her letter to him remains unanswered, but she continues her peace work everyday. She does speak some English, and after our talk, a hug, and a picture, she asked me; "What will you do, now that you have seen this?" Stunned, I paused, then I slowly answered:

"I will use my voice, and tell others." She nodded, approving, understanding.

You are now listening to my voice.

Japan has survived, and eventually thrived. On the 1-year anniversary of the event they created the very powerful statement:

"World Peace begins in Hiroshima."

The brutal truth of that statement struck a chord within me that shall never stop ringing. When we witness the inhumane potential that the war-mind has manifested, no other alternative than nuclear disarmament and eventual world peace remains. As the Japanese say, "Let Nagasaki be the last nuclear weapon unleashed upon humanity!"

The Japanese have taken steps to turn humanity's worst negative into our most positive; changing war into peace, transforming Hell into Heaven on Earth. Here are some quotes from the museum pamphlets: "Hiroshima's deepest wish is the elimination of all nuclear weapons and the realization of a genuinely peaceful international community." "The damage done by the A-bomb was so catastrophic that the conviction that humanity cannot coexist with nuclear weapons- that their use must not be allowed - was deeply rooted in the minds of the Japanese." "... the unwavering hope for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of lasting world peace..." ... the path to peace begins with even the smallest steps."

Also on display in the museum are numerous personal artifacts, poems & paintings by survivors, and some peace cranes folded by the angelic hands of Sadako Sasaki, a victim of the event. She was 2 years old at the time, and survived another 10 years until contracting leukemia and passing away at the age of 12. There is a Japanese custom that says if a person folds 1000 origami cranes they can have their wish come true, and Sadako became inspired in the hospital: in her last 6 months she personally folded over 1300 peace cranes in the hope for healing, and peace. The outdoor monument to the children who lost their lives has a bronze statue of Sadako on top, holding a giant crane, so her wish lives on to inspire us all.

After hours of walking thru the museum, exposing ourselves to the suffering and the sadness, we walk down the last long corridor towards the exit. Here is the final display for us to ponder: a huge photo of the first flower to bloom from the radioactive rubble. Less than 3 months after, a white Oleander flower, amidst full and proud green leaves, sent forth a vision of hope, a message of peace: Mother Nature is OK, and is a self-healing whole. (Human beings are a vital part of that whole.) As thinking and feeling human beings, we know that our choices- the things we do, and more importantly, the things we DON'T do- create our experience of life on Earth. We know that we CAN choose peace, we CAN create a harmonious existence. We CAN share all the resources of this planet with all of Mother Nature's children, feeding, clothing and sheltering all of Human Kind. The creation of a world-wide culture of Peace is perhaps the consciousness shift that we have been predicting; World Peace is our highest purpose, our greatest reward for being alive at this time.

Let's continue to educate ourselves and let our voices be heard, as we walk our peace-walk, and talk our peace-talk. I encourage you to explore the websites for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Nagasaki Museum which can be found by typing in those words into any search engine on the Net. Thank you so very much for sharing my experience.

Yours, in peace,
Christopher