International Travel Feature - A Visit to Hiroshima, Japan

Hiroshima is one of the most important heritage destinations in the world. It is also a lively but very manageable modern Japanese city, with a wealth of cultural activities and exciting nightlife options. A couple of hours away by air, there are air connections with Tianjin via Beijing and Seoul.

Hiroshima and the A-Bomb

Any visitor to Hiroshima must come to terms with the events of August 6th 1945. At 8.15 AM, an atomic bomb detonated mid-air, at a height of 580 metres, directly above the Shima Hospital in Nakajima district, a major commercial and residential hub. In an instant, temperatures in the vicinity of the hypocenter reached 4000 degrees celsius; the shockwave travelled 3.7km in ten seconds. Hiroshima had a population of 350000 at the time - by December around 140000 had died as a direct consequence of exposure to the blast.

It is hard to bring out the full horror of this. Just maybe, the A-Bomb Museum succeeds. It is situated in the tranquility of Peace Memorial Park, near the iconic ruins of the A-bomb monument (the preserved skeleton of a former exhibition hall), and a visit is a sombre and important experience. Various galleries outline life in Hiroshima before the blast, lead us through the decision making progress on the American side and, through artefacts, give some idea of the suffering of the victims.

The impact is both intellectual and emotional. US government and military memos and scientific reports from the time are reproduced. Many grab the visitor’s interest – Einstein’s letter to President Roosevelt, written from his home in Long Island in August 1939 is displayed; in it, he urges the President to take Nazi research into nuclear weapons very seriously, envisaging the threat of a ship-borne nuclear bomb, too heavy to be delivered by plane, but rather sailed into New York harbour.

Other documents provide an insight into the rationale behind the bombing. And these papers do not so much stress the human cost of a land invasion of the Japanese islands (as we might expect), but rather the need to justify the 2 billion US dollars invested in the development of the weapon by that point, and the desire to end the war swiftly, before the Soviet Union – only declaring war on Japan in May 1945 - became the dominant Allied Power in the Far East.

Strikingly, grave questions are raised about the sincerity of the Potsdam Declaration (the Allied peace offer after Germany’s surrender) – the Japanese were asked to surrender unconditionally, with a pointed Allied refusal to guarantee the continuance of imperial government, and they were not informed that the US possessed a bomb. When the Japanese refuse, when they say they will fight street by street, perhaps they were bluffing, negotiating, waiting for the better offer. Perhaps the allies wanted them to turn the offer down – perhaps it was designed to be turned down - to justify a nuclear attack. Perhaps.

And then we relive the horrors of the moment, and the attenuated nightmare of the days and months that followed. The artefacts displayed do not defer to the visitor’s sensitivities. A child’s bicycle, warped out of shape by the blast of heat. The pattern from a kimono burnt into the skin of a survivor’s back. The shadow of the woman who was sitting on the steps of the Sumitomo Bank, waiting for it to open (the steps have been brought into the museum). And watches, the hands stopped forever that morning at 8:15.

The crowd are a diverse group, with a mix of Japanese and foreigners. Looking at the foreigners, among the backpackers and English teachers, you can pick out the visiting families of US servicemen from the nearby Iwakuni base, in their rock band T-shirts and bearing their tattoos. None are unaffected by what they see. A visit may not change a person’s core political beliefs, but it certainly forces you to justify them more rigorously – to fully engage the enormity of the experience of those on the wrong side of the crosshair, the faces behind the coordinates in the targeting computer – and that surely is a healthy thing.

It is unnerving to step out, blinking, into the sun andback to normality. Birds chirp in the trees of Peace Park. A crowd of school kids wait outside the players’ gate of the Hiroshima Carps Baseball stadium across the road, clutching autograph books. You almost disassociate the streets you are walking through with the photos and the artefacts of the museum. Then, a kilometre to the north, you notice a black mark on a south facing wall. This is an unsettling and depressing museum; it is not light entertainment, but it is certainly important.

The Modern City

If outside Japan, most people only know Hiroshima for the events of 1945, that, it must be said, is very unfair. Hiroshima is a vibrant, modern city, offering the visitor a wealth of cultural and entertainment opportunities. It is a manageable, highly likeable city – one which is well worth a visit in its own right.

The 16th century castle has been reconstructed; inside there are slick exhibitions about Hiroshima’s feudal period history, with various pieces of armour and weapons on display.In the north of town there is a classical Japanese garden, the Shukkei-en, dating from a period when Chinese style was the epitome of high culture, taking as its direct inspiration the West Lake in Hangzhou.

An hour or so out of town, the Itsukushima Shrine rates as one of Japan’s best known sites – the Japanese will tell you it's one of the top three in the country (scenic beauty category). Getting there is at least half the fun: the shrine is on a holy island in the Hiroshima Wan, and in the past, because they were forbidden from setting foot on the island, pilgrims could only approach by boat. Consequently the torii (the distinctive orange shrine gate found at the entrance to all shinto temples) floats off-shore during high tide; to one side there is a floating stage for No opera, constructed by a local aristocrat in the 19th century, at which time the site was already a long established beauty spot. On the island itself there are shrines, some museums, a hill to climb, a beach and a herd of wild deer.

Modern Hiroshima now boasts a lively art scene. The city plays host to a regular animation festival, and is home to several impressive art museums. There is a Salvador Dali painting (“the Dream of Venus”) in the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum in the south west corner of Shukkei-en. There are also some particularly striking works coming to terms with the effect of the A Bomb.

Modern Hiroshima is a city with a large population of young foreigners (a large proportion of whom are English teachers). Tim (24) teaches English at one of the larger private language schools in the city. “We love the place,” Tim says. “I have just signed on for a third year. There are plenty of bars and restaurants. Really it’s not fair that such a great city, with so much to offer, is only known for one thing. This is somewhere I could live for a long time.”

Practicalities

Accommodation is fairly expensive in Japan, although outside the largest cities, mid-range hotels are more affordable than you might think. The cheapest option in Hiroshima is the youth hostel - dorm beds cost the equivalent around 2000 Yen (about 150 RMB). A single room in a standard hotel will cost around 6000 Yen; a double room will cost around 9000.

There are plenty of opportunities to eat well in Japan, and armed with a phrase book, it can be fun to explore the options. Hiroshima is famous for okonomiyaki, a kind of pancake made of soba noodles and vegetables served on a hotplate; the most popular topping is fish, although pork, bacon and cheese are also popular. There is a good place in the underground shopping centre across the road from the Hirsohima Carps stadium.

There are flights from Beijing to Hiroshima with China Air on Mondays and Fridays, leaving Beijing at 1450. It is also possible to fly from Tianjin with Korean Air, changing planes at Seoul.