Hiroshima

あなたの祝福を数える

We went down to the dock to get a ferry to the mainland but, before boarding, decided to see the sights at the Itsukushima Shinto shrine. (Try saying that after a drop of saki). The shrine has large Torii gate that, when the tide is in, appears to float on the water. It’s supposed to be one of the most “magical” sites in the world. Just looked to me like it could do with a lick of paint.
So, on to the mainland…

We stood beside the ruined Genbaku dome today – Hiroshima’s Ground Zero. Had we been there at 8.15am on 6th August 1945 we would have been looking into the fires of hell. We’d have been blinded by the light of a thousand suns, then incinerated and blown away as radioactive dust in a fearsome wind. At least fifty thousand souls were sent to oblivion in an instant. Another hundred thousand died of injuries and radiation sickness over the following weeks and months. Sixty eight years later it’s a tourist attraction. You can’t go to Japan and not visit Hiroshima. What happened here, and in Nagasaki, was one of the most significant events in human history.

And yet …

Standing there and looking around, apart from the dome, you wouldn’t know that anything major had ever happened there. Hiroshima was annihilated that day and has been completely rebuilt. It’s a city that has, literally, risen from the ashes. It’s a modern, vibrant, forward-looking place. They haven’t forgotten their history, of course not – but they don’t seem to mope about it. Life goes on and as far as I could see, Hiroshima just gets on with it. There’s a lesson there for all of us. If you can recover from a nuclear attack then surely you can find a way to quit arguing about flags.