In a room that probably seats a hundred, fifty or so students, a professor and some random American tourists anxiously await the arrival of our guest speaker. In class we have been preparing for this trip for weeks with videos, discussions and lectures all about WWII and the road leading up to the United States dropping two atomic weapons on two cities in Japan; Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which by the way neither were military targets. Professor Scott gave us a brief background on the speaker telling us that she was twelve when the bomb was dropped and that she has had a lot of reconstructive surgery. On the day of the trip I didn't know what to expect. How do you prepare yourself for something like this? This experience alone has made my trip to Japan worthwhile.
As a history major, you often can only read about the past secretly wishing that you could invent a time machine so that you can witness history as it happens. You can read a million books, tour museum after museum, stop at every historical marker on the interstate, watch countless documentaries and listen to a million lectures but to have an opportunity like this is rare. I have been to Auschwitz in Poland but I've never listened to a concentration camp survivor speak and I probably never will because there aren't many survivors left so I wanted to take full advantage of this trip because I knew before long there will be no more survivors. The talk was scheduled at 1:00 p.m. and we arrived in Hiroshima a few hours early so we had plenty of time to walk around Hiroshima and tour all of the sites. It was a beautiful,sunny day and Hiroshima was alive with spring just around the corner. Walking around it's almost hard to believe that this city was completely devastated by an atomic bomb. Frankly, it's a beautiful city. I couldn't help but think that even though it was aesthetically pleasing, it was in fact a graveyard. For some reason a building which was a few kilometers from ground zero still stands. It was severely damaged and burnt by the bomb but was not evaporated like the everything else. It stands as a symbol of Hiroshima, conveying to the world the horror of nuclear weapons and appealing for world peace.
It's weird standing in front of it wondering how the hell it's still standing. It is a world heritage site so they have it blocked off and do what they can to preserve it's structure. Words cannot express what it's like to look at it. It's surreal to think that it survived a nuclear attack. The theme of Hiroshima is peace so everything has the name peace in it, Peace Park, Peace Museum, Pond of Peace, Flame of Peace, Peace Fountain, Peace Gates... I think you get it. I just felt weird walking around on this beautiful day knowing that with each step I took I was treading on sacred soil. It's the same feeling I had while walking around Auschwitz. I felt like I was being disrespectful 'touring' a place that was built to carry out mass murder. We stood in one of the gas chambers and I just kept looking at the big steel door behind me, which was only being held open by a measly brick. I just kept thinking too myself, if that door closed on me I would have a heart attack. The gas chamber was filled with tourists taking pictures and I felt like I was going to get sick. I couldn't take any pictures and I couldn't finish the tour. I had seen enough and we cut out early. I think it was a little easier with Hiroshima because it's pretty and hard to imagine what it looked like after it was in ruins but with Auschwitz, the town that it lies in, Oswiecim Poland, is a miserable cold dark dreadful town so a concentration in the middle of it kind of made sense.
There's a beautiful river that runs Hiroshima right through all the peace monuments but knowing what I know about history, that after the bomb was dropped and people's skin was either melting off or burning they jumped in the river hoping to get some relief only to be burned more because the water was toxic. The river was filled with bodies and now there's a dude with a boat that wants to charge you money to take you up and down the river. Umm, no thanks. After a mixed of emotions tour through the atomic bomb tourist area we found ourselves at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. In the states we have war museums but in Japan they have peace museums, not just in Hiroshima but all over. The museum, as I am sure you could guess, is extremely depressing. Nice introduction when you're about to go listen to a survivor talk about how it felt like they dropped the bomb right on her head. I have been wanting to write about my experience; however, I needed a few days to clear my head so I am going to write about it in two parts. This is the end of part one.
When I was in college I got to see an Holocaust survivor speak, in was a really moving experience. Many of us watching her cried the whole time she spoke. She still had the numbers tattooed on her arm, when her children were young and would ask her what the numbers were for, she would tell them it was her phone number. It is a really amazing opportunity to be present when a survivor tells their story - I am really glad you were able to do this.
ReplyDeleteThe woman I saw, her name is Eva Brown, google her.