It Was No Walk In The Peace Park Baby

Trip Start Dec 01, 1999

103

Trip End Aug 31, 2000

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Flag of Japan Hiroshima, Japan
Tuesday, February 22, 2000

Hiroshima Peace City (2)

Hiroshima Peace City (15)

Hiroshima Peace City (1)

Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya

Here I sit at the Hiroshima Youth Hostel (the one on the hill) after a rather draining day mentally.

I woke much too early after going to bed much too late. Hey we found a way around the YHA Curfew. It's rather easy really. Get the 'parent' drunk (parent being the staff member who's on duty that night). After finding the hostel and something to eat I spent the night chatting to two English Girls and many Japanese. The two English Girls proceeded to slowly get the Parent drunk and therefore we all went to get more beer and sat up talking until around three.

We all had a great night chatting to the Japanese about where to go in Japan etc.

But that's not why my day was mentally draining.

Excuse me Sir, where were you at 8:15am on August 6th 1945? Oh...ok!
Excuse me Ms, where were you at 8:15am on August 6th 1945? Oh...ok!
Excuse me we are looking for anyone who looked a bit sus in this area at 8:15am on August 6th.

Hiroshima, really what do you say that hasn't already been said before.

I decided to spend the day at the Hiroshima Peace Park with a couple that I met last night. Ohhhh mate, you really do have to meet this couple, they are like fire and ice. They really are so different and if I met them separately there would be no way in the world I would believe they were married, would ever want to marry each other or even want to know each other. But remember, that's only from knowing them for a day. Of course if I spent much longer with them I'd probably have a better understanding of the who's and why's but mate, I was in hysterics from the first moment I met them.

Ok, quick description.

He is a total red neck and admits it. Has the big red neck car, gun racks, drinks only AymeriKan Beer, even looks like a red neck and goes shooting and kills a lot of things. Don't get me wrong, he was a nice guy and a bit of a softy in a way. I certainly didn't agree with a lot of his view on things.

But not only did I not agree on most of his view, his wife of about thirty years didn't either!
That's why it was so damn funny.

She was the sweetest and softest lady I've met for a long time. At the peace park she had tears streaming just touching a roof tile etc. As she was a teacher her class at school spent months making the unmade amount of paper cranes that the e little bomb victim girl didn't make due to her death. She brought them all the way to Kyoto to place at the memorial site. They niggled and naggled about everything yet went about it holding hands and cuddling.

For the life of me I've never seen a couple so opposite.
But together we shared a most memorial day no matter what our views.

At 8:15am (see above) we placed foot on the very bridge that Big Boy exploded above. It was a strange feeling standing there at the exact time of the day that the bomb was detonated. What I wrote above 'Excuse me Sire, where were you...blaa blaa' is what the red neck guy was saying at the time. 'We have this here bomb, does anyone know who it belongs too? Etc.

Believe me, they were niggling and naggling over that one!

We spent a good part of the day at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Peace Park. Believe me, it was no walk in the Peace Park I can tell you. I touched roof tiles melted by the bomb and saw so many horrible pictures and videos from later in the day and that week. I have never seen such devastation and horror than what I saw in those pictures. So many bodies! I watched videos from survivors whom talked about where they were and what they saw on the day. I saw many pictures from children and so many clothes donated by parents from the bodies of their children whom were scorched to death.

Across the river sits the last remaining building. It is warped and twisted and in bits and pieces. It's there for the same reason the photos etc are there. To remind us how pitful and stupid Man really can be as a species! The three of us sat for about half an hour after we left and sat in silence staring at this building thinking about what we had just seen.

We then went our separate ways and I spent many hours walking around the streets in search of nothing at all.

I think I'll leave here tomorrow morning and head down to Nagasaki to see the other Peace Park and then maybe on to Beepu. Both are likely to be as warm as they are pretty and Beepu has hot springs and mud due to being in a volcanic area. From there, I really have no idea but whilst I feel yucky inside I might as well get both War Museums done and then find the sunshine of life again!

Beers and Little Cheers to you...shane
_____________________________________

The soundtrack to this entry was Primal Scream. Awesome!
The album was 'Exterminator'
Awesome!

*****(2007) There is one thing that really bugs me about the Japanese Governments acceptance of the American compensation payouts and full admittance of their wrong doing. One of the most horrific happenings around the time of the war is still unknown to most Western countries.

In December 1937 into 1938, the amount of people tortured, raped and murdered by the Japanese Army was much more than the death toll in Hiroshima. War historians say that what they did and its scale in such a short time easly beats anything Hitler did to the Jews.

Yet it remains unknown and untalked about.

The brutal slayings and unimaginable rapes lasted for months and yet the government who happily accepts handouts from the American Government and accepts pity from countries all over the world for a single happening still won't admit or compensate for what their army did the people of Nanjing in China.

Instead they deleted it from their history and school books and refuse to admit that it happened.

I'm not saying stop going to Hiroshima and Negasaki as what happened should never have happened and compensation and pity are due but what I don't understand is, how can the government accept it and still sleep at night?

How strange is Man as a species!