My trip to Hiroshima

[Panzermacher]

Third set coming up....



A good side on shot from behind



Rear view of Tower, notice rubble still on the ground.



Last shot I took of the A-Dome, as the sun was setting.



This is a shot of the then, unfinished Museum and a statue in front...Yet again, notice the flowers, and such...



Peace Park. First Pic I took as we arrived...3 of my friends are in the front. Side note the Taller man in the center, is now Chief Engineer of my old ship.



A Broad shot of Peace Park

[Panzermacher]

Last set.....



Monument...The pile of Flowers and ribbons pretty much says it all.....



A statue commemorating Peace.



My buddy ringing the Bell....That bell tolled all day long....We all rang it as an honor to the dead...Local people said it would be a nice gesture for us to do....



A close up of the Peace Bell. I don't know if you can see it , but it has a map of the world. Where the wooden clapper hits the bell, is an Atom. We were told you were to "Crush" that symbol, and make the bell sing, so this would not happen again, by a local man. I could not get a pic of it as the bell was in constant use all day.



My last pic as the rest of the roll did not turn out...all the indoor pics didnt come out as I had my camera set to wrong exposure and never knew it! It was the Diorama they had at the museum with the red ball hangign over it...showing approximately where the bomb went off

[Panzermacher]

Questions? Comments? feel free to ask...

[Jim O]

Thanks for posting.

Seeing the A-dome one gets a small sense of the power of the blast. I have been to Oklahoma City and seen the remains of the Murrah Building. There you get a sense of that one comparatively small explosion. It is hard to imagine a whole city pounded that way by one bomb.

[Tom Houlihan]

Jim, there are two rather nice dioramas in the main room. Almost identical. They portray the city just before, and after the blast. Rather sobering to look at, especially when you consider that they don't show dirt, scorching, or allow the senses of smell and hearing to come to bear.

[temujin77]

Great pics Panzermacher!

If you'd like to wrote a little piece about your trip to the Peace Memorial, I wouldn't mind hosting it on my website, along with posting a few pictures! It can be something like this about my trip to Taipei in 2006:

WW2DB: Trip to Taipei, 5 Nov 2006

What do you say?

[Panzermacher]

Originally Posted by temujin77

Great pics Panzermacher!

If you'd like to wrote a little piece about your trip to the Peace Memorial, I wouldn't mind hosting it on my website, along with posting a few pictures! It can be something like this about my trip to Taipei in 2006:

WW2DB: Trip to Taipei, 5 Nov 2006

What do you say?

I can do that gimme time to get something together and rack the old brain....

[temujin77]

Originally Posted by Panzermacher

I can do that gimme time to get something together and rack the old brain....

Look forward to it!

[gi-rene]

Where a father goes... his son soon follows...

A dragonfly flitted by me
and stopped on a fence.
I stood up, took my cap in my hands,
and was about to catch the dragonfly when...



2 Minutes after explosion a mushroom cloud gathers, one of many pictures taken between 1-40 minutes after the detonation.



8:15AM August 6, 1945 frozen in time.




The A-dome today.



The Cenotaph for the A-Bomb Victims etched up on it is: Let all souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil. Inside is a ledger that contains the names of all the victims. It is updated every year on the anniversary.



The A-dome from the peace park.



Scale Model of 1 second after detonation.



A woman's shadow "burnt" into the stone. Essentially the stone was whitened heavily by the blast and her ashes were burnt into the stone. Its faded but a picture nearby shows it recently after the explosion.



Sadako Sasaki's Paper Cranes: The most touching story: She was a mile from the hypocenter and was 2 at the time but later developed the latent problems of radiation sickness and leukemia. She was hospitalized and given a year to live in 1955. She decided to fold paper cranes, legend saying that someone who folds 1000 cranes would be granted a wish. So she folded in an effort to find a cure. She made it past 1000 and as she went the cranes got smaller and smaller, there are examples of ones that were folded with needle points they are so small. But she eventually passed away at the age of 12. They gave away some of her cranes at her funeral (some of which have made their way back to the museum) and later her classmates decided to push for a monument in her honor. There now stands a children's memorial that has booths filled with chains of a thousand cranes brought from all over the world and hung behind the memorial.



The peace bell, to be rung for everlasting peace. I struck it, the ring is loud and persists for a long time, and that was a medium tap. Its detached and brought to the cenotaph where the mayor of Hiroshima strikes it at 8:15 on the 6th of August every year during a moment of silence.

It was an emotional place to go to say the least, not as much as being on Iwo Jima (that was a very personal pilgrimage for me), but it was another thing I felt I had to do with my time in Japan. It was well worth it. The museum is very informative and presents the information unadulterated from the fall of Nanking and the Hiroshima residents celebrating it as a holy victory (not knowing the atrocities being committed there) to Pearl Harbor, National Mobilization (which led to many children's death when the bomb struck, since they were mobilized to help put out fires and clear rubble in the radiation), to the decisions of the development, choice of target, and finally use of the bombs. Others point out Nuclear Weapons and their historical development, which nations hold them, lists of accidents, gifts from other cities. It was solemn but I kept telling myself that it had to be done, Operation Downfall would have cost us and them so much more. But then you get to the room that shows the pictures of the blast taken by Japanese photographers, an entry way built to look like a rubbled building with paintings of the destruction that would have laid outside of its windows. Then you see the wax figures of Japanese with their flesh sloughing from their bodies (which seems to be a common story among survivors from the immediate area of the blast, or where the dying were round up). Then the shock hits you as you see these artifacts and clothes and their stories, all ringing the same. A waterbottle belonging to a boy, a girl's work pants, a boy's lunch box and charred lunch, a national uniform for a teenager, and every one of them were sent in to clean up and died days later. Or were never found and the parents only managed to find their belongings. The boy that was buried with his helmet and trike. The pictures of men and women brought into hospitals mangled and burned. That was the only place in a stuffed public building I have heard dead quiet, aside from a quietly whispered comment or question.

The Mayor of Hiroshima is a great person for trying to fight nuclear weapons development but I fear that it is not something that will be simply eliminated. But I wholly agree that we should never have to use them... ever. And then you realize how many close calls we've had.

That autumn
In Hiroshima where it was said:
"For seventy-five years nothing will grow"
New buds sprouted
In the green that came back to life
Among the charred ruins
People recovered
Their living hopes and courage

[Panzermacher]

Man! It looks like you walked EXACTLY in my footsteps when I took my pics Very nice pics!