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. ...

View of Hiroshima

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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Hiroshima hall

Passing the hall in Hiroshima where I would be speaking in the evening.
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Hiroshima Peace Museum and meeting facility

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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iWth Hiroshima Peace Museum Director

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.


Signing guest book at Hiroshima peace museum.

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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Interview by Asahi Shumbun

After touring the peace museum, I was interviewed by reporter Kim Soon-Hi of the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading nationwide/international newspaper.

 


Hiroshima tree survived the blast

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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Hiroshima peace arch

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.
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With my hosts at Hiroshima peace arch

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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Hiroshima peace flame

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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Plaque at hypocenter

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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Hiroshima Korean Memorial

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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Hiroshima Korean Memorial-2


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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Hiroshima Dome

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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Peace cranes, and my guides

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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Peace cranes make a picture

A peace picture made of thousands of tiny folded peace cranes.
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Cranes in foreground of peace park


Looking back at Hiroshima Peace Park and Memorial Museum from the paper-cranes area.
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March 16: Osaka Arrival  | March 17: Conference  |  March 18: Tokyo

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