Hiroshima, A New City

Isn't it crazy to think that a bustling city full of life and people...

Once looked like this??

Visiting Hiroshima was such a unique and somber experience. The city now is a pleasant city with nice and happy people. In the center of the city is the Peace Memorial Park and museum that shows what happened to the city on a sunny day in 1945. The information and images in the museum are mind blowing. It was interesting to learn about why Hiroshima was the target that fateful day out of a list of a few cities (the weather was clear that day in Hiroshima, it hadn't been air raided at all yet, and the U.S. knew we had no P.O.W's in Hiroshima), and inspiring to see their resolve to rebuilding and promoting peace.

I loved the Children's Peace Monument, which was dedicated to Sadako, the 12 year old girl who died from leukemia but was determined to fold 1000 paper cranes in a hope that it would save her. The cranes in the photo above are some of Sadako's original cranes. Now everyone in the world can submit paper cranes to the monument in memory of Sadako and in hope of peace.

 

 My favorite place we visited in the city were the Shukkeien Gardens, which were originally built in the 1600s. After the a-bomb blast, the garden was pretty much obliterated, and the people doubted the standing trees would ever blossom again. Sure enough, a few of the ginkgo trees (now known as "the bearer of hope") blossomed the next year, and weren't completely killed by the blast and radiation.

Now the gardens are a beautiful and serene place to walk around in, and after learning about these surviving trees, it had me singing the song from The Secret Garden broadway musical the whole time: it's the part after Mary learns there is hope for the seemingly dead garden:

"When a thing is wick, it has a light around it

Maybe not a light that you can see

But hiding down below a spark's asleep inside it

Waiting for the right time to be seen

[...]

"Oh, somewhere there's single streak of green below

And all through the darkest nighttime

It's waiting for the right time

When a thing is wick, it will grow!"

You should listen to it, it's a great song. Anyway, that was definitely an inspiring moment for me from visiting Hiroshima: that there is always hope, even in the darkest times. It was a beautiful and memorable day.