Hiroshima - Japan

Hiroshima was very pretty and it was a little sad too. It’s hard to imagine any of the Japanese people as encouraging war or indeed starting it.
However despite history, or even because of it, it’s difficult to believe anyone would be interested in keeping nuclear weapons.

First we saw the A Bomb dome. This was the Industrial promotion hall and the bomb was dropped on 6th August 1945 at 8.15am, 600metres over the hall. Everyone inside the hall died instantly. but because the bomb exploded directly over the hall, a lot of the infrastructure of the building emerged unscathed.
The dome of the hall is still evident as are most of the walls of the building. Apparently for a moment after the bomb dropped the temperature on the ground below reached 5000 degrees celcius.
Hiroshima was chosen due to the towns many military functions, plus it was the only target in Japan thought not to have a POW camp in it. To hear the stories of the survivors and to be able to listen to some diary extracts of those who perished was overwhelming.

It’s crazy that Kim dung Balls is even thinking of releasing a nuclear weapon, particularly when you consider 1 tenth of the people who were killed in Hiroshima were Korean.

Anywho, we visited the peace park, saw the Children’s monument in honour of Sadako (a child exposed to the bomb who was later diagnosed with leukaemia at age ten. She believed that if she could fold 1000 peace doves (origami) she would overcome the cancer. She died before she finished and all her classmates rallied young people from around the world to finish making the doves in her honour. A lot of money was also raised and a monument in honour of all the children who died from the Abomb in Hiroshima was erected in the Peace Park. We saw the monument dedicated to the Koreans’ killed by the bomb too.

Before it all got a bit too depressing, we decided to go have some lunch as we hadn’t eaten all day. We had some really fat noodles that tasted like nothing and some vegetables deep fried. (well at least I was getting some veggies) (they eat very little veggies in Japan).

Afterwards we tried to go into the Baseball stadium in Hiroshima (they’re mad about baseball in Japan) but I think there was a game on. The team is called the Hiroshima Toyo Carps – but we didn’t get to see them.

We wandered down the Hori-Dori arcade in search of a chocolate/banana croissant and a coffee to share on the train home.