Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Take 2

We so very much enjoyed being at Miyajima, it was hard to leave knowing what was in store for us at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.  The kids DID NOT want to go back, but we told them that we had to.  We often tell the kids that learning the history of the world is so very important because if we as members of the human race don't learn our history, we will repeat it.  And, if we only learn about the easy and nice things in history, we won't be able to learn from the mistakes of others in the past.  Because of this, we HAD to go back to the museum.  We needed to learn about the atomic bomb drop in Hiroshima, even if it was going to be hard. 

We took the metro back to Hiroshima Station and put our luggage in lockers and then went back to the memorial museum.  This time, we politely declined the offer of the elevator way over on the other side of the museum and instead picked up and carried Kirstin in her stroller up the stairs just like we usually do.

 The museum is very well organized and as you go through it, you see the events as they happened in chronological order.  In the first room, they had this display of the city and where the bomb hit.  The few buildings in the display are those that were still standing after the bomb dropped. 

After we returned to Tokyo, we watched an interview on the internet of one of the men who was on the Hiroshima bomb mission.  He said that they planned to drop the bomb where the two rivers met, which can been seen in the display.  There is a bridge there in the shape of a T, which was easily visible from the air.  The bomb exploded just to the side of the bridge.  It is interesting to note that the main cluster of buildings that were able to survive the blast are directly under the bomb when it exploded. 

A model of the atomic bomb known as Little Boy.  This bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

 Against the walls on both sides of the central display, there were several belongings of people who were in the blast.....

Fifteen days after the bombing, the mother of Hiroko (then 18) started to comb her daughter's hair, but in three strokes it all came out except for a fringe along her hairline.

Miyoko (then 13) was a first-year student in high school. She was exposed to the bomb at her building demolition work site. Her body was never found, but her mother found this wooden sandal two months laer. She recognized it by the straps that she had made herself using material from her kimono. The print of Miyoko's left foot remains on the sandal.

Shigeru Orimen was a first-year student in junior high school. He was exposed to the bomb at his building demolition work site. Early in the morning of August 9, his mother found a body with this lunch box clutched under the stomach. The lunch Shigeru never ate was charred black.

Shinichi Tetsutani (then 3 years and 11 months) loved to ride this tricycle. That morning, he was riding in front of his house when, in a sudden flash, he and his tricycle were badly burned. He died that night. His father felt he was too young to be buried in a lonely grave away from home, and thinking he could still play with the tricycle, he buried Shinichi with the tricycle in the backyard. In the summer of 1985, forty years later, his father dug up Shinichi's remains and transferred them to the family grave. This tricycle, after sleeping for 40 years in the backyard with Shinichi, was donated to the Peace Memorial Museum.

Toshiaki Asahi was a first-year student in junior high school. He was exposed to the bomb at his building demolition work site along with 325 other students and teachers. Nearly all died instantly. He made it to the river, where he stayed for a while. Later, he was found by a neighbor and taken to his home in Kabe-cho. Despite his serious injuries, he talked about the bombing, the damage, and what had happened to his friends. He even expressed concern about following the procedure for school absences. He died in the morning of August 9.

There were other things, including skin.  On some people, their skin seemed to 'melt' off of them.  One mother saved the melted skin of her son who died a few days after the blast to show her husband who was off at war.  That was just too gruesome and it didn't seem right to take a picture of that.

The kids learned that many of the children their age were not in school when the bomb was dropped.  Instead, they were at their work sites.  The government had decreed that these children leave school and instead spend their days working to aid in the war effort.  This was something that my kids were not aware of.
Next room.....

 A person sitting on the bank steps waiting for it to open was exposed to the flash from the atomic bomb explosion. Receiving the rays directly from the front, the victim undoubtedly died on the spot from massive burns. The surface of the surrounding stone steps was turned whitish by the intense heat rays. The place where the person was sitting remained dark like a shadow.

See where it is a little darker on the steps?  That's the shadow.....

More clothing, bags and bus tickets, and pictures of those who were burned.

 Heads of Buddha statues at temples that were in the blast.

Roof tiles that were in the blast.  They had some that we could touch.  Several of them were melted and deformed.

This brick wall was between the two buildings of the Hiroshima Army Clothing Depot. The ground there was weak and soft, so the violent shaking of the ground at a cracked part of the wall lifted the upper layers like a mountain.

Pictures of the devastation of the city and artifacts that we could touch.

Glass bottles that were melted together.

Tea cups that were melted together.

A collection of things that were found among the wreckage as they began to clean up the city. 

Some were melted, others were so deformed that we didn't even know what they were until we looked them up on the list of items in the corner of the display.

A Buddhist statue from a temple.

Twenty-thirty minutes after the explosion, the dust and soot blown into the sky over Hiroshima began falling as rain over the northwest sections of the city. This rain fell as far as 29 kilometers from the hypocenter.  This white plaster wall was part of a house about 3,700 meters from the hypocenter. The black stains are still clearly visible. Trace levels of radioactive substances from the A-bomb have been detected in those stains. Fish died and floated to the surface in the ponds and rivers where this rain fell.  Many people who drank from the wells in the area where the black rain fell suffered from diarrhea for three months.

Next room.....
The third room was full of pictures and short videos of people who suffered from the atomic bomb blast--some dead and some who probably wished they were dead.  The pictures were upsetting and gruesome, and it didn't seem right to take photographs of such horrible human suffering.  One picture I will always remember was of the back of a woman.  She had a grid pattern burned into her back from the kimono she was wearing.  The heat from the bomb blast penetrated more at the dark parts of the clothing that made up her kimono and actually went through and burned her skin in the cloth's pattern. 

 This room concluded with a large display about Sadako Sasaki and her life before and after the atomic bomb.  When we first arrived in Japan, I read to the kids the chapter book titled Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes in preparation for this trip.  We were all very interested in seeing this display.....

This is Sadako, before she got sick.

While Sadako was in the hospital suffering from leukemia, her family bought her a beautiful and very expensive silk kimono.  They knew that she probably would not live much longer and so they spoiled her and not only got her a really nice kimono, but these shoes and purse to match.

Some of Sadako's kokeshi dolls that she played with and letters from classmates.

Some of Sadako's paper cranes...

They had several of Sadako's cranes, some so small that she had to fold them with pins. 

Seeing Sadako's personal belongings and her medical records really brought it all home to the kids and made it seem more real than it had before.  We had all come to relate to Sadako through the book I had read to the kids, and it was a tender experience to see some of her personal belongings. 

The last room was of the emergency response teams and how they helped after the bomb explosion.  Finally, we saw pictures of many political figures from several countries in the world and how they were pledging to do everything they could to stop future atomic bomb blasts from occurring.

The museum was upsetting, as it should be.....it's designed to shock the person going through it.  It was hard to read and see everything that we did in this building, but WOW!, how blessed we were to be able to be here and to see and learn all that we did!  It was hard, but the kids did well.  I think that going through it just a little bit the day before was a good thing, it helped them to know what was in store and allowed them time to mentally and emotionally prepare to go completely through it today and be able to learn rather than just cry through it all. 
The museum was unbiased and unpolitical, which was refreshing.  It provided the facts of what happened and didn't sugarcoat it or try to point fingers. 
It was quite the experience, one that I hope none of us ever forget.  Given the emotions that we all had as we walked through, I don't think we ever will.