Japanese Word of the Day:
English: Crane
Japanese: Tsuru
English: Crane
Japanese: Tsuru
Remember how like two weeks ago I went to Hiroshima? Well it’s finally time to finish that up since everyone was starting to recover from the sadness of the tsunami/earthquake. Let me first say that like before I am going to attempt to avoid personal bias and report what I saw as I saw it. I also need to add a warning that some things I will mention and the accompanying images will be graphic and possibly disturbing in nature. That being said, let’s get started.
The memorial was spread through two buildings, connected by a long walkway on the second floor level. We entered the main building and after paying a minimal 50yen entrance fee began the exhibit. It started with a history of Hiroshima, especially its militaristic uses. Hiroshima was a large military base during many pre-WWII wars including the First Sino-Japanese War*, during which Hiroshima castle hosted the emporer. Hiroshima was also a military point of interest during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I but I’m no military expert so I can’t tell you much about this.
By the time World War II came around Hiroshima was home to a large military base as well as a marine port making it an ideal bombing target. However, Hiroshima managed to avoid the bombings of major cities such as Tokyo^. Hiroshima, being a military base, had a lot of community involvement in the war effort as well. In addition to voluntary metal drives and other such community works many students of middle school and high school age were involuntarily selected to work on project in the town. These projects included things such as working in factories or tearing down buildings too close together so that fire could not spread should they be bombed.
Next to all this information about the militaristic involvement of Hiroshima were copies of the letters (and a few originals) between Einstein and the two presidents (FDR and Truman²) as well as letters between the Truman and the military on which cities to consider bombing. If I recall correctly, there were 5 cities considered for bombing; Kyoto, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and two others I cannot recall. Eventually, it was narrowed to 3 cities and then finally to Hiroshima. Eventually the order was passed and with clear skies over Hiroshima on August 6th 1945 at 8:15 AM the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima.
Survivors would later report that there was an air raid siren earlier so they all took the necessary precautions and stayed out of danger before the all clear signal was given. At 8:15 witnesses reported seeing a plane in the sky and wondering why it hadn’t triggered the air raid siren. Then there was a flash of intensely bright light.
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| "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" -J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1945; Director of the Manhattan Project upon hearing the bomb has been used on Hiroshima. |
The exhibit then curved into a reconstruction of the a-bomb dome (post bombing) on which the walls had been plastered with telegrams sent from Hiroshima every year to the leaders of the world begging for an end to nuclear arms. Since the reconstruction of Hiroshima every mayor has sent these telegrams on the anniversary of the bombing in the hopes of getting through the message of the need to obliterate the use of nuclear weapons. The rest of the first building was entirely devoted to this cause, displaying the amount of nuclear weapons each country in the world had and where in the world there are memorials to Hiroshima. I’d like to break my pact of objectivity to mention that Asheville, North Carolina is one of the cities listed and for that I am incredibly proud.
That concludes the part of the museum that you know about. Or it was the part I knew about before going in, anyways. We then took the 2nd floor bridge to the other building which was focused on the people of Hiroshima and the effects of the bombing. We entered the building into a hallway made to resemble the broken shell of a building still standing with the atomic landscape viewable out the holes.
After passing down the hallway we were greeted by the next simulation; wax figures which had their partially melted skin hanging off their bodies. This is not an exaggeration by the museum, that is what actually happened.
When the bomb hit, the people who were outside were directly hit by the heat that melted buildings and instantly incinerated anything flammable. People wearing hats had their hair burn off where the hat was not covering them and the flaming clothing burned and melted the skin not already melted by the heat from the bombing. People who were inside buildings were (somewhat) protected from the intense heat but those unlucky enough to be near windows were bombarded by thousands of shards of glass. Those inside the buildings were also at risk of being crushed by the buildings as they collapsed on top of them and fire raged throughout. The people who had been outside or directly hit by the heat from the bomb had their insides melted³ so they immediately craved water and upon drinking water the shock of the cool water would instantly kill them. Because of this the rivers of Hiroshima were quickly filled with bodies.
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| From "Barefoot Gen", a manga about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. It's based loosely on the author's (Keiji Nakazawa) own story as a Hiroshima survivor. |
Because of the enlisting of students to clear buildings many students were working where the bomb went off making children a bulk of the casualties. The exhibit continued on to show glass cases with belongings of victims of the bombing such as tattered clothes or a lunchbox. After reading a few I began to notice a pattern; they were all children and they all died shortly after the bombing. The blurbs would mention a mother or father looking for the child for days and eventually finding their possessions as all that was left of them or finding the child and having them die in their arms later. One display showed a girls hair, completely matted together and said that the girl’s mother had retrieved her and upon trying to brush her hair had the entire mass fall off, cemented together. Possibly the most… upsetting display was of the remains of fingernails of one individual. The caption said that after the bombing people were so desperately thirsty for water they’d drink the puss from under their wounded nails.
After the bombing the sky was grey with the debris floating around and it began to rain a black rain that was described as thick and like oil as well as highly radioactive. The rain lasted a day or so and took radiation up to the mountains where the bombing had not directly affected people. For many of the people of Hiroshima there seemed no escape from the disaster and no help. This was not posted in the museum (if I recall) but it took about a year for the people of Hiroshima to be acknowledged by the government and given medical treatment.
The museum also mentioned those affected by radiation, called the “a-bomb disease”, such as Sadako, whom I mentioned in my previous post. Several of her cranes were on display as well as pictures of her and her story. Women who had been in Hiroshima often gave birth to children affected by the radiation by either developing leukemia such as Sadako or by being born with severe birth defects which made the child completely dependent on a caretaker for their entire life.
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| Some of Sadako's cranes. I wish there was something for size comparison, they were tiny. |
So after that intense round of shock my friends and I took a break from the museum to get lunch and try to find joy in the world once again. After eating, Ellen and I found a 100yen store where I got a pack of 330 pieces of small origami paper and some thread to string cranes together with. At home in America I actually have a box with around 600 cranes in them that I meant to someday take to Sadako shrine but it wasn’t really on my mind when I was packing for Japan. So while waiting for the speaker Ellen and I began making cranes to leave at Sadako’s shrine.
When the time came we filed into the small auditorium to get good seats for hearing the speaker – a woman who was in Hiroshima during the bombing and survived. For those wondering, she would be speaking in Japanese and our teacher who had coordinated the trip would translate. The woman was a tiny but relatively healthy and normal looking woman (considering what she’d been through). When our teacher asked her if she’d like some water she actually ran off to get him a glass of water, if that says anything about her personality.
She began by telling us that she was 13 (I believe I may be a year or two off) when the bomb was dropped and as a result her class had been deployed to work in a parts factory that was unfortunately downtown. She was working next to her friend when there was a blinding blue light and the earth began to shake. The next thing she knew the building had collapsed around her, trapping her and her friend. They began crying out for their mothers, grandmothers, and teacher to save them. They heard their fellow peers crying out as well and heard a fire begin in the collapsed building and through some maneuvering managed to escape from their entrapment. As this point, her friend was badly bleeding from the leg and she was also bleeding from a wound in her arm. The speaker tore her pants to make a tourniquet for her friend’s wound and to wrap both of them. At this point they escaped the building to see their city in complete ruins around them. The speaker said she saw a woman covered completely in glass carrying her dead baby and another boy who was holding his disconnected arm. She also remembered seeing the rivers filled with bodies of people who had gone to drink water and died as well as the bodies of horses.
Horrified and scared, the speaker fled to her home where she found her father had left to go to the factory and look for her. Her father searched the factory for her for 3 days, indentifying bodies in the rubble before returning home and being reunited with his daughter. During this time, the black rain I mentioned earlier happened exposing her father to high levels of radiation in addition to what hung around the bombed factory. As a result of this, her father and primary caretaker died 3 months after the bombings. The speakers mother also died, though I believe it was years later; she didn’t speak that much about her mother. The speaker herself was not through her suffering. While her father was still alive the wound in her arm began to be infected by maggots and she recalled him removing them with chopsticks as they had no other means. It took her 6 months before she went to a doctor and got 7 shards of glass removed from her body and an additional year for government aid to arrive. Later in life she developed cancer, though I cannot recall what kind, but through surgery was able to survive. She did lament that no one would ever marry her because of the fear of her “a-bomb disease” birthing an unhealthy child. She is now in her 80s and quite healthy by the looks of her.
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| I have to apologize for the image quality, I wish I had a proper picture of her. She's demonstrating the emergency air raid bags/rations/head wraps they kept with them at all times. |
After she spoke there was time for questions and eventually someone spoke up and asked the elephant in the room; does she hate the Americans for what they did? Her answer was passionate and genuine. She hates the American government and even the Japanese government but not the people. She hates what the war did to her and how it robbed her of her health, her family, her youth but she does not hate Americans. She said in the past she had met a group of young American students who had apologized to her and shown her how humane and kind we can be and she will never forget that. A student also asked her what she thought of the museum and how it displayed the events of the bombing. She paused a bit before answering and saying that there were parts she did not like, but not elaborating on what exactly. It’s not very Japanese to outright criticize something (which makes her hatred of the government much more intense) but I’m now quite curious as to what about it isn’t accurate.
After the questions and answers we all had a chance to get in line and speak to her personally, if we so chose. I had brought one pack of high quality, regular size origami paper with me and I made her a crane out of it and waited until almost everyone was gone to give it to her. Speaking of cranes, by the end of the session Ellen and I had made about 61 cranes and that number bothered Ellen so we sat on a park bench and upped it to 65 before stringing them together. Our string of cranes is now hanging in Sadako’s shrine along with thousands of others.
After that all, we decided to explore Hiroshima for the remainder of the evening and enjoyed exploring both the town and the remains of Hiroshima castle. I’ll post some pictures of that stuff later but I don’t really have much to say about it. By now you all could probably use some sunshine and kittens anyways so I think I’ll end this post here.
Ja ne!
[If you notice any factual inaccuracies or typos please let me know so I can correct it asap!]
*This war was between Japan and China, mostly for domination over Korea
^I have no idea why Hiroshima was not bombed during this time. I know Kyoto was spared because it was a center of art and culture but I don’t think Hiroshima had any such significance.
²FDR was the president whom Einstein originally contacted about the potential of an atomic bomb whereas Truman was the president who actually ordered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
³I’m not sure if this is quite the right word but I’m at a loss for a better one.
^I have no idea why Hiroshima was not bombed during this time. I know Kyoto was spared because it was a center of art and culture but I don’t think Hiroshima had any such significance.
²FDR was the president whom Einstein originally contacted about the potential of an atomic bomb whereas Truman was the president who actually ordered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
³I’m not sure if this is quite the right word but I’m at a loss for a better one.
