Saturday, January 14, 2012

Hiroshima

This is going to be a little bit different from my other update posts. I feel like talking about the impact of Hiroshima needs its own special post.

Being in Hiroshima has been tremendously emotional and stressful. It's an awesome city. While I was walking from my hostel to the Peace Memorial Park, I kinda just looked around and was thinking that none of those buildings were there 75 years ago. Not one of them (of the ones I was seeing). When I was at the A-Bomb Dome, I started to get kind of emotional. The whole park is really powerful, and feel like going as an American gave me a sense of responsibility for what had happened. I looked at everything in the museum and thought, "We did that." It was horrible. It took me about 2-3 hours to get through the museum, and afterwards I was too emotionally drained to want to do anything. I know I didn't do it, but it was so devastating to see what people have the capacity to do to each other. There were so many personal stories and items (I'm going to do a separate posting with pictures/descriptions when I have the time to sit down and give them the attention they deserve).

You can never really get the scale of the disaster until you've been here. Its possible to have a wealth of knowledge on the subject, and understand what happened-- and even feel sad about it. However, I doubt you'll ever really get the full scale of the destruction unless you actually come here. You'll see what happened, who was affected, the area affected; you'll think of where you're staying and what would have happened to you if you were here on that day (I would have been completely obliterated-- 1.75km from the hipocenter). You'll wonder with every step you take, how many people died on that spot and how horrible it must of been for them. And you'll probably cry (or at the very least, have to choke back the rears); especially if you're American.

Hiroshima is a wonderful city, and its amazing to walk around and take it in knowing what happened in it's past. Every time I think about it, now even, I feel a huge weight. This portion of the trip has been extremely educational, but not always fun. I've enjoyed myself here insofar as I feel like I've become more highly aware of whats around me.

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