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Magazine
DESTINATION
Hiroshima forges ahead
SADHANA RAO
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Hiroshima’s resurrection from the rubble is for all to see as the land and its people have worked to make it happen.
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The cardinal truth remains that between governments and their play of “an eye for an eye”, the world does go blind and the innocents are always surely victims.
Photo: AFP
Fateful segment of history: The peace memorial and the A-Bomb Dome in its background.
In the picture album of world events, Hiroshima and the explosion of the atomic bomb have shared an affiliation of space. Such images often have a tendency to coalesce and become unitive. Given Hiroshima’s graphic pictorial legacy, the polished contemporary face that the city showcases comes as a startling, nevertheless, pleasant surprise.
Hiroshima (in the Western Honshu region of Japan), is compactly wedged between two natural borders: the hills and a charming coastline. Built on the delta of the Otagawa river, the city is poised in a funnel among the hills, as the river meanders to merge with the sea. The hills, the river, the funnel, the sea, could not, however, provide the protective sheath from the ominous missiles of warfare.
On August 6, 1945, at 8.15 am, for an instant, the heartbeat of the world was jolted. The world’s first Atomic Bomb was dropped on-target Hiroshima. The worst consequence of warfare. The world in the intervening years between the 1930s and 1945 had increasingly become a war zone. Most of the world players engaged in the dangerous game of Kriegsspiel.
The earth’s terra firma had now begun to resemble quick sand. Nations were down with a malaise of overreaching differences and selective dialogue. Hiroshima and her residents had to deal with a staggering scale of destruction. Pain and suffering were sharply defined and endemic. There were no catholicons to reach out to, in the seemingly inviolate spectre of gloom.
It was prophesised that, for 75 years, nothing would grow on Hiroshima’s soil. The very next fall a tulip sprouted from the same soil, testifying that natural growth has but a few impediments. Pretty much like the tulip, Hiroshima, charted its growth from the rubble and debris.
Clear choices were written in permanent ink, to rebuild, to forge ahead, towards peace and growth. In a sense, there are two Hiroshimas. One, centred on the “Peace Park”, where memories of the effect of the Atomic Bomb, are hewn and enshrined in memorials and, the other, in its broad boulevards, art centres, and a huge manufacturing base.
The “A-Bomb Dome”, is the only building that survived the nuclear explosion. Col. Tibbets with his crew in the B-29 bomber dropped ‘the Little Boy’ with deliberate precision, striking an important hub of work and human energy. The dome (the then Industrial Promotional Hall) was severely damaged. However, it has been preserved in its exact form and shape after the explosion (steel girders have been fitted internally to prevent it from collapsing). Layered in the Dome’s brick-work and stone alignments rests its sombre architectural legacy. During the day under natural light, the brick and mortar reveal their tryst with nuclear force. At night, the building emits an eerie light, thanks to its electrification.
AP Photo
Amidst severe reservations from some countries, the Dome was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996. The torch-bearers of the Peace initiative are clear in their avouchment for the preservation of the Dome. For them, the Dome serves “as a reminder of destruction and a symbol of future peace”. The Dome and the Hibakusha (the bomb survivors) are companions, who have lived through a fateful segment of history. It was indeed poignantly moving, to hear an aged Hibakusha speak with tremulous murmur of the explosion that had appeared like a thousand Suns, of witnessing continuous and sudden deaths, of peers and family, of pain. One could only wish in the smile of their greetings and the sheer effort of having lived life, the polemics of war and conflict be forgotten.
Peace Park
From across the Dome, the park spreads picturesquely over several acres alongside the river flowing quietly. The image of such tranquillity belies the holocaust, this densely populated area once faced. The park has a simple, yet haunting, memorial to those who died in the explosion. The names are engraved on a stone chest, with a promise “Rest in peace…. the mistake will not be repeated”. The Hall of Remembrance has an assemblage of 140,000 tiles in memory of each person. While viewing the Peace Park, the framework of peace should be kept in mind. The argumentative positions, (Japan’s massacre of citizens in Nanking, China’s retaliation, U.S. air raids), the prejudices and justification of armed conflict seem small, inconsequential and lose meaning. The cardinal truth remains that between governments and their play of “an eye for an eye”, the world does go blind and the innocents are always surely victims. The memorial cenotaph fittingly frames the “Flame of Peace”, which has been burning since 1964, and will only be extinguished when the earth is rid of its last nuclear weapon. The “Peace Bell”, has an inscription of the Greek philosopher, Socrates, cautioning men to “Know yourself” in Greek, Japanese and Sanskrit. The bell is rung several times, by visitors resonating need for peace.
A journey through the museum is gripping. There were no joyous exclamations of awe or happiness that other museums invoke. The events of the blast are recorded with photographic depiction. Life size models document the long term impact of radiation. Exhibits of scorched personal belongings, a melted desk top Buddha statue, sandals, watches that stopped at 8:15 a.m., lunch-boxes, a patterned kimono, remnants that survived to be identity badges of their owners.
An extremely poignant site was to see schoolchildren standing with folded origami paper cranes in an unnatural silence near the “Children’s Peace Memorial”. The inspiration behind the memorial is a girl Sadako Sasaki who developed leukaemia as a result of A-Bomb sickness. She commenced on a trajectory to fold a 1000 paper cranes; cranes in Japan signify longevity. But she passed away while folding without reaching her goal. Her unfinished mission, sparked off a national and worldwide symbolism of folding cranes and sending them to the memorial.
The architects of Hiroshima’s growth and revival can sit back and sip their Sake in proud reflection. On wobbly foundations under disquieting times, these revival and restoration artists opened new doorways and windows of thought processes and executed with a bias for action. The road thus far must have had its fair share of hurdles and speed-breakers. Hiroshima’s spirited resurgence best exemplifies the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The real and lasting victories are those of peace and not of war.”
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