Hiroshima, Japan

Hiroshima has a population of 1.2 million, is the 10th largest city in Japan and is located on the island of Honshu. The city is quite flat, but is surrounded by tall mountains. As we approached the pier, you could see hundreds of the top forms of oyster beds, for which the city is known.
Our morning tour was to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum. It was a very heavy and emotionally packed morning. History is foremost in mind here and the city has created one of the most important and breathtaking memorials in the world, The Hiroshima Memorial Park and Museum. Statues, halls and monuments at this world heritage site honour those who died as as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War 11. In addition, there are an array of shrines and temples, as well as the city's reconstructed Hiroshima Castle.
-There are six rivers in Hiroshima and thousands of bridges.
The bridge in the memorial park, was the target but they actually missed that area by 300 metres.
-The bomb, called 'Little Boy" was dropped at 8:15am in 1945 so many, many people were out doing their daily activities.
Although the world in general has a valid fear of nuclear bombs, I am going to describe some of the specific, mind boggling details that most people would not know about .
-the bomb did not actually hit the ground, nor was it intended to. It was designed to explode 1900 feet above ground which it did do.
-the bomb contained the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT.
-the burst temperature from the explosion was 1,000,000 degrees C , yes, one million degrees!
-observers from over 5 miles away said the light from the explosion was 10 times brighter than the sun.
-The bomb physically reduced almost everything to rubble within a 3 mile radius.
-Why did they pick Hiroshima as one of the bombing targets? Because it was one of the few large cities that had not been damaged already by previous bombings, and the land surrounding it was quite flat. This gave the United States a better opportunity to show Japan and the world the destruction power of the atomic bomb.
- as the the B29 bomber flew away, the co-caption, seeing the extent of the destruction, said" Oh my God, what have we done!
130,000 people died because of the bombing. It is not known how many died the actual day. In August of 1944, well before the bombing, the national government of Japan enacted the Student Labor Service Act which required students at the middle school, high school, and higher education levels to serve their country by helping with war efforts such as working in munitions factories or tearing down buildings to create fire breaks. As a result, roughly 6,300 of the 8,400 students in Hiroshima, serving under this Labor Service Act were instantly incinerated. In addition to these students, many more who were working in other business facilities around the city also perished. The Hiroshima Memorial Tower to the Mobilized Students was built with funds gathered by the bereaved families to honour the students and memorialize them.
We saw a memorial that is a saddle-shaped arch. It was designed for the middle of the park, so you could look back through it to the A-Bomb building at the far end and also look ahead to the fountain of hope. Within the stone arch memorial is a register of all the people who died as a result of the bomb. Below the arch is a stone chest holding a register of these names, of which there are over 220,000. Names are still being added each year as still more people are dying as the result of the radiation.
We also saw The Children's Peace Monument, a statue dedicated to the memory of the children who died as a result of the bombing. The statue is of a girl with outstretched arms with a folded paper crane rising above her. The statue is based on the true story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who at the age of 2, remarkably survived the bombing but later, at the age of 12, developed leukemia due to the radiation from the bomb. On learning of her life ending diagnosis, Sadako made 1000 cranes hoping that she would survive her leukemia but sadly she did not. Shortly after her death her classmates, teachers, and family, created 1000 paper cranes in her memory. Since then, the crane has become a symbol of remembrance and hope and people make long strings of paper cranes and hang them around the peace memorial.
We walked through the museum at our own pace and read descriptions and saw pictures and read heartbreaking personal stories as a result of the bomb. Today, as we walked through the museum, it was extremely crowded because of the number of groups of school children, in addition to tourists. As we walked through the dimly lit exhibits, there was absolute silence. No one was speaking. The descriptions and pictures were horrifyingly graphic. While on the ship a few days before visiting the museum, I watched a TV documentary in our room and one survivor described seeing people with their eyeballs hanging out, their skin, shredded, and hanging from the bones and intestines hanging out.
The exact number of people killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima is difficult to determine but, estimates generally range from 70,000 to 80,000 people who died immediately or within the first few days after the explosion. By the end of 1945, the death toll had risen due to radiation sickness and injuries, bringing the total to approximately 140,000.
Long-term deaths from radiation exposure and related illnesses, including cancer, continued to occur in the years following the bombing, further increasing the overall death toll. Some estimates suggest that by 1950, the total number of deaths attributable to the bomb may have reached 200,000.
Experts are divided almost equally on whether the bombing was necessary at all, some citing that Japan was on the verge of surrendering, while others claim that the bombing ended the war and prevented an invasion of Japan that would have cost millions of lives on both sides .
On a lighter note, on the way back to the ship, our guide asked us what we thought was the most frequent question that her guests asked. I suggested it was where is the toilet which she didn’t seem to find very funny. In fact, she said it had to do with the correct pronunciation of the city. She showed us two signs, one being HIROshima the other being HiroSHIMA. The correct answer is neither. The Japanese pronounce it so that all syllables are treated equally.
We returned to the ship for a quick lunch and headed out again on our own, by taxi, to visit the reconstructed Hiroshima castle. The castle was originally constructed in the 1590s but was largely destroyed by the bombing in 1945. The main keep was rebuilt in 1958, a replica of the original that now serves as a museum of Hiroshima's history before World War II, and other castle buildings have been reconstructed since. It was five stories high with detailed history of the people of Japan, and the progression of people who built the castle.
Then back to the ship where we had an enjoyable snooze on our veranda. There was a spectacular sunset tonight, but, because of the red colouring in the clouds, a bit haunting after our museum tour. Dinner tonight was at Prime Seven restaurant where we enjoyed a lovely surf and turf dinner. We did not go to the entertainment tonight as we had seen the fellow a few nights ago, plus we were quite tired after a long day.Read more