We left Kojima on the train at 6:30, arriving on the island by 9:30 or 10, early enough that the line for pictures in front of the gate was still fairly short. It’s pretty neat the way it works: when your group reaches the front of the line, you turn around, hand your camera to the person just behind you in line who takes your picture, then they pose and the people behind them take their picture, and so one. However, we chose to avoid the crowds at these most popular spots, which gave us a chance to appreciate the quiet and beauty. And the offbeat paths gave us surprising glimpses around every corner.
At the top of Mt. Misen are several temples, some of which date back hundreds of years. We rode the aerial tramway as far as it went and were treated to views that were impressive through the haze. The visitor center at the upper tram station had a sacred column where couples could pledge their eternal love while having a picture taken—cheesy or charming? You decide. Back at the bottom we needed to buy a few gifts, so had to join the crowds buying souvenirs, tee shirts, and eel or oyster treats (it seems every city in Japan has something it is famous for).
At one nearly empty shop we were waited on by an older woman in a traditional kimono (for tourist consumption?) and her even older father. Sandy thought it was sweet, that when he tried to ring us up she gently helped him with the change. We exited the shopping mob to meet more of the tame deer which will pull your map or your ferry ticket out of your pocket and eat it. Forewarned is forearmed.
What thoughts are stirred by the dramatic temples and their upswept beams? The beauty, or the thought that the apostle Paul said that the living God does not live in temples made by human hands, does not need anything from us, but made us that we might seek and find him?
Back at the Hiroshima main train station, we cram into the streetcars for the atomic bomb memorial museum. With ten stops to go, at each stop people somehow make some standing room for a few more. A young woman starts to give me her seat so I can sit by Sandy, but I decline. Everyone’s jammed in together but no one complains; in fact, oddly enough, no one talks—about sports scores, weather or anything at all. Then I remember, on the ferry, we broke through the natural reserve when we noticed a young couple had 3-year-old twins and we struck up a conversation with them and were silly with the kids.
The first thing you see at the atomic memorial trolley stop is the iconic, stark preserved dome and ruins. If the beauty we saw in the morning was about serenity, the Peace Memorial is about the unthinkable.
Walking first along the river to the south, then across it, we make our way to the memorial park, main museum, and several other sculptures and displays. Unfortunately we chose flower festival day to visit and immediately we found not only crowds, but several stages and international performing groups presumably drawn by this unique place.
As the epicenter of the first wartime use of nuclear weaponry, it has become the epicenter of world peace movements. So it was somewhat jarring that the first sights and sounds were of a hula group with guitars and vocals performing on the bank of the river. Other groups displayed traditional drumming, or baton twirling, all of course for the cause of peace. But the paper cranes (see your library or Wikipedia for the story of Sadako Sasaki and her paper cranes) of all sizes sent in by tens of thousands of children from all over the world begin to focus one’s thoughts.
Once inside, we’re again in a quiet crush of people, but this time it is not reticence, but the somber hush of a thousand minds collectively taking in images of horror.
Feet slowly shifting, gazes moving from one image to another—a watch stopped at 8:15, a movie of the bombing run, a shock of hair from a victim, a diorama of smoking ruins, shredded clothing and personal items whose owners were never found, objects melted into bizarre shapes. I consider myself a well-read, thinking person. I see merit in the arguments that atomic weapons ended World War Two and prevented World War Three (barely) because of their very unthinkableness. But I suppose the victims of an atomic holocaust have a right to set the terms of the debate. Of course when I think of the naïveté of wishing that North Korea and Iran would join the table of rational discourse, I don’t have much hope. But if someone needs to keep mankind pointed toward the dream of peace, why not the children of Japan?
What about the comparisons between Hiroshima and the earthquake/tsunami damage of 3-11-11? Some images are reminiscent: flattened cities, helpless victims gone in a moment (numerous children in both cases—in Hiroshima the children were employed in demolition in the creation of firebreaks), people fending for themselves, years of rebuilding ahead, a radiation involvement. But the contrasts as well: the one manmade, the other from nature; the one fell upon a broken nation, the other to a prosperous; 140,000 lives in one, 25,000 in the other; ultimate radiation effects—yet to be determined. One ushered in a modern era; perhaps the other will usher in an era where Christians regard Japan with new awareness. So where does that leave us? May we be both thoughtful students of history, and faithful servants of His story. . .
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