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| Excerpt from Trinity: An Illustrated History of the First Atomic Bomb |
Before coming to Japan I read a graphic novel about the making of the atomic bomb. The heartbreaking illustrations, the richness in narrative and information, make it a real force in the graphic novel world. I learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki in high school, but this novel helped bring back some of the information that had long faded to the farthest corners of my mind.
We hosted a speaker prior to our trip who was a child in Hiroshima in 1945. He told us some of his experience and memories from the bombing on August 6th. His talk focused on written texts that were distributed in class. Among them was a poem found in the Hiroshima Peace Park, by Sankichi Toge.
"Give back my father, give back my mother;
Give grandpa back, grandma back;Give me my sons and daughters back.
Give me back myself.
Give back the human race.
As long as this life lasts, this life,
Give back peace
That will never end."
Even with the build-up to our weekend trip, I felt underprepared for our visit to Hiroshima. We spent the morning traveling and by the time we got there I was exhausted. Our first stop was the Peace Park, at the epicenter of the bomb. I was astounded by the amount of vegetation, all the life that I was surrounded by. There was a museum, a memorial hall, and a sculpture in the middle of a large garden. The rivers where people cooled their scorched skin, bled, and died, glittered. I sat on a park bench for some time, looking at the Atomic Dome, one of the only buildings that remained standing at the epicenter.
It wasn't long that I was approached on the bench. Two Japanese women in their sixties said hello, asking me questions about my visit to Japan, learning a bit about where I'm from. My body was still angled towards the dome for part of our conversation. We spoke in vague terms of the Peace Park, of the bomb, but not in any sort of detail. I quietly hustled in my mind, trying to find anything that I could say. No words came.
I learned quickly that the women were Jehovah's witnesses. They showed me some informative videos online, recommended that I visit their website. After fifteen minutes of talking, I figured I could ask them one provocative question. I asked what race Jesus was. They looked to each other, then to me. Trying to intuit what I wanted to hear, I could see that I was giving them some trouble. They paused, then one said "Middle Eastern." I nodded enthusiastically, agreed. "Yeah, Jesus wasn't white." We spoke for a few more minutes before I excused myself for a trip to the museum.
Three hours after arriving in Hiroshima our group had reunited on our tour bus and was headed for our hotel. I don't know what I expected, coming to Hiroshima, but it wasn't what I found. We were surrounded by mountains and river wherever we went.
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| The view from our hotel room |
When I say that our trip was unexpected, it wasn't because of the Park, or even our beautiful surroundings. What surprised me the most was that the rest of our 3-day trip was basically a vacation. I can't deny that it was enjoyable, I loved our trip to the touristy islands of Hiroshima, only a ferry ride away. But it did bring about no small amount of discomfort. I get into this a bit more in the podcast, but suffice to say it was a thoroughly disconcerting weekend.
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| The reflection of a man in a creek |
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| Taken outside the hotel |
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| Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima |
