Hiroshima!
So today I spent the day going to the memorial places - the park, museum, statues, memorial, the dome.
I have to say that Hiroshima is a lot more gentle than Nagasaki. They still have upsetting pictures and models, but there's a lack of substance about the place. Epically the museum. Nagasaki explains far more about what happened and also why it happened. Which Hiroshima Museum did not. No explaining of what lead to such an awful event, why it was targeted and the effects of the bomb. It does cover (even if not so well) the effects to the body being in an atomic bomb area. Mostly it covers the acute things like burning, diarrhoea and such. Not so much on the long lasting effects like cataracts and cancer. I felt the information given was brief. Like it was going for a shock factor, where Nagasaki is fact factor. It also didn't talk as much about how their trying to stop the creation, using and testing of the A-Bomb. There were some petition slips you could sign but little info about what it is your actually signing for...
The park itself was beautiful. Trees coming into blossom, the flame of peace, lovely architecture, statues framed but thousands of cranes. Which is where Hiroshima came above Nagasaki, there's a statue at Hiroshima of a young girl hold a big origami crane above her head. I knew about the 1,000 cranes gives you a wish because of one wonderful man who did make 1,000 colourful cranes whilst I was ill before my transplant. Hiroshima explained where it started.
Which was when a young girl who lived in Hiroshima in 1955, was diagnosed with Leukaemia. She had heard the legend of a thousand cranes and began making them with whatever she could find. Cranes are not only the symbol of Hiroshima, but also a symbol for happiness. Hoping that when she finished, it would grant her good health and the end of suffering in Hiroshima. Sadly, she died before she could finish them. So her classmates made them in her place. And that's where it began.
I found a place to have some late lunch and just kind of looked around. The rest of the day wasn't very interesting in comparison but it was still a nice day.
Bunny island tomorrow!!