Day 75 - Friday March 29, 2024, Hiroshima, Japan

Arrival: 7:00 All Aboard: 15:30 Departure: 16:00

Good Friday

The clouds are breaking up. It must have rained overnight as the deck chairs are wet.

Two tugboats have been directing Insignia into our berth directly outside the Hiroshima Cruise Terminal.

We have a Viator booked with our friends Jean and Pete. The day will be a somber one as we will be visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Site.

Our guide (Sei pronounced Say) is at the gangway to greet us. The four of us including Sei climb into two taxis to drive to the Hiroshima train station. From here we take the train to Miyajima Island via Miyajimaguchi train station where we boarded a ferry. Sei recommended standing on the starboard side of the ferry to get a view the Great Torii as we sail by. It is a free-standing Shinto shrine gate out in the sea and made the front cover of that days Oceania Currents.

You can see Miyajima deer here but not in numbers like we saw in Nara.

This island is crowded with many queuing up to enter the Shinto Itsukushima Shrine. We decided it was not worth the to wait and moved on, the beauty of a private tour.

Instead, we continued to the Daishoin Temple where the crowds were a lot smaller. The reason for this was probably due to the road's incline towards the temple and the number of steps to climb once on the temple grounds. Rather than taking the stairs directly to the temple, Sei recommends walking through the temple gardens to avoid most of the stairs. What a surprise little stone carved red capped buddhas are scattered around the gardens.

It is time to make our way back to the ferry to catch the train to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

The United States and Japan were in talks at the end of WWII prior to the denotation of the atomic bomb. The United States and her allies wanted unconditional surrender however Japan could not agree with this. With the invention of the atomic bomb in May 1945, four potential cities (targets) were named, these cities included Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Kokura.

The initial bomb was detonated over Hiroshima on August 6 at a height of 600 meters (1,968 feet) with the second bomb detonated over Nagasaki August 9, 1945, at a height of 502 meters (1,650 feet.) The cities of Kyoto and Kokura were spared due to cloud cover on August 9.

These unfortunate cities with large urban areas suffered horrifically - Hiroshima had between 90K-146K killed and Nagasaki 60K-80K killed. Roughly half of these people died on the first day of each bombing. Over the next four months the balance died from the effects of burns, radiation sickness and malnutrition. In addition, there was a very high incidence of cancer in the year and decades that followed.

The Hiroshima Peace Museum is part of history and should be visited by anyone who is in Hiroshima. When you arrive, there is a clock reporting the number of days since the first dropping of the atomic bomb while underneath the number of days since the latest nuclear test. This date is surprisingly less than three years ago.

As you walk through the first portion of the museum there are pictures of Hiroshima prior to the bombing. The next exhibit is titled "A Lost way of Life" with the time and date of the bombing with pictures after the denotation.

The museum's message is simple "No More Hiroshimas" Let's hope the world listens.

It was difficult walking through the museum looking at the artifacts and reading the testimonies of survivors from that day. Feels eerie as no one was talking as they proceeded through the museum.

One of the exhibits were stone steps from the entrance to the Hiroshima Branch of the Sumitomo Bank. Here it is believed that a customer was unable to avoid the explosion and died instantly. The steps of the bank turned whitish except for a dark portion from where the man was sitting.

Our guide who was 77 years old and was born in 1946 (he called himself a postwar baby) said that it was always very hard to visit but told Janice that the Japanese were able to move on from his horrific event only after they forgave in their hearts.

The final section of the museum deals with living in a nuclear era. There are sufficient nuclear weapons in the world now to destroy mankind several times over.

In the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a flame continues to burn and will continue to do so until all nuclear weapons have been destroyed. This is a huge task, and we can all only hope for world peace.

There is also an arch where you can see the flame and in the background the remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. This is to act as a reminder of what happened on August 6, 1945.

Every year on this date the city holds a Peace Memorial Ceremony to remember the souls lost and pray for lasting world peace. One minute of silence is held throughout the city as the Peace Bell and sirens ring at exactly 08:15, the time the atomic bomb was dropped.

It was an eventful day beginning with a visit to Miyajima and then to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum. Sail away was 16:00 as we make our way to Busan South Korea, 218 nautical miles from Hiroshima.