Hiroshima Day One

Up early in Kyoto to catch the 8 am bullet train to Hiroshima.  By 10 am we were at Hiroshima station and ten minutes later we had dropped our bags at the hotel.   We could not check in to our rooms yet, but that was ok as we had things to do.


We got a street car from Hiroshima train station to the Peace Park which took about 25 minutes.  As soon as we got off the street car we were standing in front of what is known in Hiroshima as the 'genbaku dome' or  in English 'the atomic bomb dome'.  When the atomic bomb exploded above Hiroshima in 1945, it blew up almost directly above the most modern building in the city at the time which was the four story commercial display building.  It had a dome of glass on a metal frame work at it's top, so it now has the name of 'atomic bomb dome'.  The blast pancaked the floors of the building to the main floor and destroyed much of it.  But enough was left standing that it was decided to preserve the building as an example of the destruction of war for future generations.  It is sobering to come upon evidence of war for those of us who have not experienced it.

From there we walked past the eternal peace flame and on to the Peace Museum.  The museum does two things:  first it discusses the causes of the war and pulls no punches in assigning blame to the Japanese government of the time.  Then it shows the effects of the war, specifically what happened to the people of Hiroshima.  There are no punches pulled there either as we hear from the diaries of people describing the death of their parents, brothers, sisters and children.  Hiroshima has done its best to become a center for peace education in the world, and this museum is an important part of that work.

Over the past few months we have been steadily making 1,000 paper cranes.  We had a lot of help too.  Other classes at Kwalikum Secondary made cranes for us as did the students in Errington Elementary School, Arrowview Elementary School, Springwood Elementary School, Oceanside Elementary School, as well as John Paul II Christian School in Port Alberni and volunteers at the Nanaimo Art Gallery.  The cranes were excellent.  Many of the students back in Canada had decorated them with hearts, peace signs and their names.  The children back in Canada were clearly aware that they were making something that was intended to promote peace and healing.  It seems their cranes had some power.  As we assembled our 'bouquet' of cranes at the children's shrine in the Hiroshima Peace Park, people began to gather and look at these Canadian kids and what they were doing.  They asked us where we were from and thanked us for what we were doing.  It was a nice moment.