8:15am August 6, 1945

The morning we traveled to Hiroshima was an early one. Waking up at 5:45am to catch the shinkansen (headed in the opposite direction from when we went to Tokyo) and traveled for another 2 hours (about 225 miles) and walked straight to the Peace Memorial Park to meet our guides. I have determined that I am the only one in my class who can stay awake on those things.

Our first stop in the area of Hiroshima that we were touring was the museum. It just so happened to be that the day we went was also the day that 5000 kiddos of all ages we on school trips to the exact same place at the exact same time. So we saw lots of this.

Silliness aside, the atomic bomb museum was probably the saddest and most upsetting thing I've ever walked through in my entire life. It's one thing to be told in an American classroom that 60+ years ago we dropped a bomb on Japan that resulted in a lot of lives being lost and radiation that made the area unsafe for a while and people sick. It's another thing entirely to hear first hand a survivor's account of the event, see resulting damage in person, understand just how many people died and how they died, all the while surrounded by the next generation of Japanese who are simply there for academic's sake.

I've always heard "whoever discovered the formula used for atomic bombs must really regret it" (Einstein and others) and always just agreed because it's really just promoting warfare, etc. After seeing just what that kind of raw power can do (when it doesn't even impact the ground, the A-bomb used at Hiroshima exploded in the air above the city), I can't help but wish we were still unaware of how to do that to each other.

I had to walk briskly through the sections of the museum that made me queasy to look at (models of people with their skin literally dripping off of them, burn victim pictures, radiation effect on the human body diagrams, etc) and instead photographed some of the items that were in display cases. Here are some of the more interesting ones.

                            

Immediately following the tour through the museum, we got to have a private conference with Isao-san who was a 79 year old healthy, English speaking survivor of the bomb. He told us how he got lucky and was drafted out of the city that morning to help with the demolition of some houses that had bad foundations, and that the rest of his class had been killed by the bomb. He suffered burns to his arms and face, but otherwise was spared most of the horrendous damage suffered by most of the people in town.

He was very kind, earnest, energetic and joined our tour of Hiroshima area for the bulk of the day after the conference was over.

Here are some shots of the peace park that we walked through (while getting accosted by many little Japanese students who had to practice their English on us for class by conducting "interviews". We were rewarded with little paper cranes!)

After the peace park, we were shown the elementary school that was left standing (barely) after the blast, and had been untouched since 1945. In the basement, were billions of little paper cranes and other colorful crafts made to promote  peace. According to Isao-san, the Japanese believed the bombing to be more a matter of fate than something to be angry at the US about. Now, he says, they just want to spread peace through the world and abolish the use of A-bombs.

After we had had our fill of Hiroshima and sad things and history, we hopped onto a ferry and sailed over to Miyajima Island! There, we took way too many pictures of deer, took turns being the 'guide' for the day by reading out vocab/important figure cards to the rest of the class, bought souvenirs and ate steamed beef buns (SERIOUSLY THE BEST FOOD I'VE HAD HERE with the exception of Ashley's and my homemade dinners)

Oh, and this was my dinner. Tempura udon.

We were once again exhausted by the time we rode the shinkansen back to JCMU. Professor Thomas was kind enough, however, to grant us a free Friday (no class or travel or anything we didn't initiate ourselves) and Ashley and I spent it lazily making pancakes for breakfast, watching the latest Dr. Who episode and eventually making a healthy veggie-full dinner before being whisked away to karaoke night with the majority of the class.

A great start to the weekend, indeed~!