East Coast Maori
TRAVEL BLOG,

14^th August

A day to remember, was up early to catch the Shinkansen to Hiroshima. I had heard about the A Dome [atomic dome] which is the only building standing after the bomb was deployed.  It was a 4 hour train trip and I’d reserved an early seat and a late seat return but to be honest it does not seem like four hours the time just flies by like the trains. Hiroshima was sad, that’s all I have to say about that, was it necessary I don’t know.  I still don’t know why Japan bombed Pearl Harbour which started the Pacific war.  I know the Enola Gay was the B52 that dropped little boy which weighed in at 4 tons and just over 3 metres long and cost a staggering 2 billion American dollars and 130 thousand people to make it happen.  How can such an object of slight proportions leave such devastation behind it.  Little boy detonated 600 metres above the Hiroshima dome hall and deprived a nation of 350,000 people.  The real number is not known as people died from infection to cancers for years.  Whole generations were lost in one small minute of man kind.  We can be so dumb and stupid at times and yet we are our own destroyers of us.

I sat in the court yard for some time and the rain came down like it was hailing tears.  It was probably lynne our friend who was being buried today back in Hamilton New Zealand.  My Sarah was a mess, but I can understand why.

I have a friend who visited Autzwetz who told me that it had the most unsettling feeling he had ever felt and during their tour no one spoke, they just walked and watched with darkened faces.  Well this is what it was like where I am now.  I see an elderly Japanese women bent over with hands clasp in front of her, lips moving talking to the building. She is old, her back long ago bent with aged time, her hair grey and thinned, but eyes so bright she could be younger than she appears.  The rain pelts tearing at her and she stands there sodden and still. Her family holding umbrellas and each arm are next to her.  A boy no older than Lucas  is held by a young Japanese women who’s face is buried in the babies fluffed up hair.  I wonder what secrets this old lady holds in her memories, where are they and will she let them be free to tell the story of the hell she faced.

All around this area it is strained with people hundreds of people in this gardened area, all not hurried or talking.  There is no laughter and no sound of  joyous moments, and I believe this is what this place does.  It brings you to remember and not forget. We cannot go through this again.

I go to the museum and it is full of all sorts of people, visitors from all around the world are here and all not talking.  I stop to watch a video of the bomb and the voice of a survivor telling us what happened, still no one talks.  Children are quickly controlled and told to respect this area.  I sit in the victims rememberance hall.  I sit here for a few minutes and look at the walls which tell me of the areas that once were and of how many lives had been taken.  It is so over powering I just cannot imagine what it would have been like.  I leave a gift under one of the stoned chairs and call to my ancestors to visit here to seek out those still wondering.

In another area there are photos and names of those lost, little babies pictures appear and those of the most beautiful women you could imagine, all gone.  There is another voice of a male who tells of how he searched for days to find his daughter after the bomb and as he could not find her, he went to her school and found ashed bones.  So he took these and buried them as his daughter.  He still did not care if they belonged to someone else he just needed to believe.  Another women tells of how she left her daughter under a pillar as the fires came and she could not get her out, of how she then struggled to deal with her weakness.  Ever night her sisters would sleep next to her for they feared she would commit suicide, she still screams to the gods her sorrow at being a bad mother.

I wanted to come here to see for my self what was left, learn some history and to say that I care.  I’ve done what I set out to do and now it is time for me to leave.   ECM