Hiroshima

The "Peace Memorial Park" was our main reason to visit Hiroshima.

The most famous landmark in Hiroshima is the Atomic Bomb Dome. It is one of the few buildings that survived the 1945 Atomic bomb explosion.
Around the building, which was one of the first places we saw in the park, we met various survivors who told us their stories. It sounded almost unreal.



The atomic Bomb dome, around this building - some 2 km in each direction - most buildings were blown away. That included the people!

Scattered throughout the park lots of other monuments and statues are placed by the different parties. For example the statue for the Korean victims above.

A story that touched us a lot is the one of The Children's Peace Monument. It is a statue dedicated to the memory of the children who died as a result of the bombing. The statue is of a girl with outstretched arms with a folded paper crane rising above her. The statue is based on the true story of Sasaki Sadako a young girl who died from radiation from the bomb. She believed that if she folded 1,000 paper cranes she would be cured. To this day, people (mostly children) from around the world fold cranes and send them to Hiroshima where they are placed near the statue. The statue has a continuously replenished collection of folded cranes nearby.

(text from Wikipedia).

Here is a picture of some of the paper cranes hanging down in strings. There are millions!

After going through the park, we went into the museum. An incredible place, very educational but very confronting too! It was extremely sad - especially in the old part of the museum, where wax figures were shown. Nothing was left to the imagination, people with skin falling off and dying gave us a really bad feeling.

An old watch - it stopped ticking the moment the bomb fell on Hiroshima.

Hiroshima is the first city in the world on which a nuclear bomb was dropped. Up to 140'000 people died because of this AWFUL happening.

Hiroshima today is a modern city, and the people seem to be fine - but that might be the outside only... Still today, Hiroshima does a lot to show the world that peace is extremely important. Something like this may not happen any more.

All in all, an unforgettable visit!!!