Long-standing readers of my holiday blogs will know that I don't consider it a holiday unless I get to visit the scene of a Second World War human horror, mass slaughter or heart-breaking tragedy. We rolled all three into one today by taking the train down to Hiroshima.
There are very few things for tourists to do in Hiroshima, all of which are atom bomb related, which is largely thanks to the atom bomb itself which destroyed the city's temples, castle, zoo, parks and museums along with the rest of the city back in 1945. We thus went for a stroll in the Peace Memorial Park, a rather bland 1950s concept of a memorial – all modernist statues, wide boulevards and bland lawns – which is designed to provide an uninterrupted view from a sarcophagus housing the names of all of those who died in the bomb at one end, through to the so-called Atom Dome – one of the few buildings to withstand the blast – at the other. Just behind that is a giant black blot of an office building, which I suppose is a reminder that the Japanese revere commercial considerations over almost everything else.
The park also houses the Atom Bomb Museum, which takes a very neutral stance (about who was to blame in the war, I mean, not about whether or not destroying Hiroshima was a good thing), and presents the evidence in a relatively factual way. In the first room we learned on the one hand about the rise of militarism in Japan and the army's belief that Japan's victory was a predestined matter of divine will, provided enough of their people sacrificed their lives; and on the other we learned about the US army's desire to scientifically measure the effects of its new weapon in a real life situation, as well as their need to send a clear message of superiority to the Soviet Union. All of this was then followed by a few personal accounts of the bomb going off (from both the bombers – who reported that their plane got a bit rocky when the bomb went off, poor dears – to an old man who turned around to see the sky split open above him. Apparently to those in the city, it appeared as though the sun was crashing to earth).
The next room was about the reconstruction of Hiroshima and was rather dull so we pretty much waltzed through that one; and then the third room was about the personal effects of the nuclear explosion on the population of Hiroshima. Many were vaporised of course, leaving behind nothing but a shadow burned into the pavement, and those that weren't made for rather upsetting photographs of melting skin and screaming faces. The most moving exhibit was a series of children's possessions, explaining in turn how each of their owners had died, sometimes in somewhat too graphic detail. There were also sections where you could examine the effects of the blast on bricks, roof tiles and – in one room – human body parts, which had been extracted and preserved in formaldehyde.
Hiroshima as a city seems to come out of it all very well. You might expect them to have been angry or driven to seek revenge, but they've largely mopped up the damage, forgiven the United States and are now dedicating themselves to the pursuit of world peace. The city itself bears few scars, and is barely distinguishable from Kyoto or Osaka (except in size, of course: it is a small and friendly place). Only occasionally do you stumble across one of the few remainders of the old city. A coffee shop we tried to visit turned out to be in a converted bank that had been half-destroyed in the blast, and we stumbled across a few more occasional ruins during our jaunt round the city.
After a trip around the park, we went to visit Hiroshima Castle. For hundreds of years the castle was a much admired flat-land military building in Japan, considered unassailable due to a series of concentric defensive moats, however these great defences did little to protect it from the power of Little Boy and the castle was completely destroyed in the blast. To improve morale after the war, the authorities rebuilt the castle in 1957, although unfortunately it was not a particularly good example of restoration work as the new castle is constructed entirely from ferroconcrete with wooden cladding. Admirable from a distance, once you enter the castle it is like being in a municipal leisure centre. The rest of the castle grounds were restored in 1991 – the moats and outer buildings, this time built only from wood – but with this concrete monstrosity sitting in the middle of it all it can only be considered to be stage scenery.
We checked into our hotel – the Chisun Inn in central Hiroshima – and had a light nap before popping out to the lovely Sawadee Lemongrass Grill, a Thai restaurant near the hotel which is very much recommended. The atmosphere was only slightly polluted by the loud bellowing of two western businessmen, who made Fry & Laurie's 'Dammit, Marjorie' sketches tame by comparison.
We watched Part 2 of Cleopatra, then bed.
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