March 16: Osaka Arrival | March 17: Conference | March 18: Tokyo | Text of Speech
Peace Mission
to Japan
Day 4: March 19, 2002
Hiroshima
I doubt I'll ever find words to adequately convey the experience of visiting Hiroshima, standing at the spot above which the atomic bomb exploded at 8:15 a.m. in the clear blue morning of August 6, 1945. Perhaps pictures can do more where words fail. ...
A view of Hiroshima taken as we entered the city. Hiroshima is built on a
river delta, and so is transected by several river branches.
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image above to see it displayed in larger size, in a new window.
Passing the hall in Hiroshima where I would be speaking in the evening.
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The Hiroshima peace museum and meeting facility. I noted the coincidence
that from the outside the building resembles the high school I attended.
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Minoru Hataguchi, the Director of the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Museum, took me on a tour of the facility. We are photographed in the museum lobby before the tour. A Berkeley coffee mug I presented to him is in his hand.
At the conclusion of the museum tour, I was honored to be asked to sign the
VIP guest book. Major figures who have visited the museum include Jimmy Carter,
Mikhail Gorbachev, and Mother Teresa.
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After touring the peace museum, I was interviewed by reporter Kim Soon-Hi of the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading nationwide/international newspaper.
This tree was exposed to the atomic bombing. After the city was destroyed,
it was said that nothing would grow there for decades. When this tree began
to show signs of life after the blast, it gave great hope and inspiration
to the survivors.
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The Peace Arch in Hiroshima Peace Park behind the museum. the stone sarcophagus
inside the arch contains the names of all who fell to the atomic bombing.
Every August 6, new names are added as hibakusha (a-bomb victims) die
or new information is discovered identifying others who were killed at the time.
The Hiroshima peace flame and the Hiroshima dome, which can be seen through
the arch, were next stops on our visit. I was honored to be guided through the Hiroshima peace park by Haruko Moritaki
(L, dark suit), whose father founded the Global
Peacemakers Association, a leading organization against nuclear weapons,
and friend. They also surprised me at the Shinkansen (high-speed train) station
at the end of my visit, bearing gifts of Hiroshima. The generosity
of my Japanese hosts was such that I was almost unable to pack everything
into my suitcases for the return to the U.S. -- and that's after emptying
an entire suitcase of gifts and materials I had brought to Japan.
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Though
not visible in this photo, a peace flame burns at the center of this pond,
its base representing outstretched hands. The flame was lit by clerics of
many faiths, and will be extinguished when the last nuclear bomb is destroyed.
I told my hosts I would wish to be here for that event. Throughout the park
are various ponds and fountains, in remembrance of the cries for water from
severely irradiated victims in the first hours after the blast. At the time,
there was a rumor that giving the victims water would cause them to die, so
their cries went unheeded.
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image above to see it displayed in larger size, in a new window.
The bomb
exploded approximately 1900 feet directly above this spot, emitting heat greater
than 5,000°F. The plaque stands against the wall of a new hospital that
replaced the one then standing there (seen as a rubble archway in the photograph).
The hospital director was out of town on the day of the blast. When he returned
he found no trace of the hospital patients or staff, including his brother,
also a doctor. His family still runs the rebuilt hospital at the "hypocenter"
of the atomic bombing.
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image above to see it displayed in larger size, in a new window.
Memorial to the Koreans who died in the atomic bombing. Many people were brought
to Japan as forced laborers before and during World War II. A number of them
were in Hiroshima at the time of the blast. The next morning I was to meet
one such Korean hibakusha and learn of his organization's outreach
to Korean a-bomb victims who have returned to their home country.
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Another view of the memorial to Korean victims of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
The serpents riding on the back of a turtle are important Korean symbology.
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Standing
before the Hiroshima Dome, I felt a heightened sense of immediacy and reality
regarding the atomic bombing. The recently built hall was nearly directly
below the blast. Its chrome dome-roof was instantly vaporized by the heat,
allowing the wind to rush down into the building and blow out all the windows,
which relieved enough pressure to leave the structure mostly intact. Today,
Hiroshima engineers face challenges in keeping the fragile structure standing.
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image above to see it displayed in larger size, in a new window.
My tour
guides in front of some of the hundreds of thousands of origami peace cranes
brought to the park by schoolchildren
from Japan and throughout the world every year. Behind the white wall, construction
workers were at work on facilities for displaying the cranes. The cranes remember
the story of Sadako Sasaki,
a childhood a-bomb survivor, who died of leukemia in 1955.While hospitalized,
her closest friend reminded her of the Japanese legend that if she folded
a thousand paper cranes, the gods might grant her wish to be well again. With
hope and determination, Sadako began folding, but she did not survive long
enough to finish 1,000 cranes. Ever since, schoolchildren have folded groups
of 1,000 paper cranes to complete Sadako's quest and to symbolize their desire
for world peace. (I was arrested
with dozens of peace activists in blocking the entrance of a cruise-missile
engine-building plant in Michigan in 1985. After the rest of my group was
arrested, I held a string of peace cranes across the driveway. Not one missile
worker would drive through and break the string.)
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A peace picture made of thousands of tiny folded peace cranes.
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Looking back at Hiroshima Peace Park and Memorial Museum from the paper-cranes
area.
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March 17: Conference | March 18: Tokyo
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