Hiroshima - Day Two (Afternoon)

Everyone has heard of Hiroshima. And you can`t visit the city without a trip to the A-bomb dome and the Peace Park.

The A-bomb dome was the only building left standing in the immediate radius of the epicentre of the bomb and has been preserved. It is now an UNESCO world heritage site.

It`s hard to imagine the landscape as it appears in the pictures just after the bomb hit, it is now so different.

The Peace Park is a large grassy area that has, at it`s top, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The museum takes you through the history of the event, some upsetting memorabilia and the consequences of the bomb. It was thoroughly interesting and greatly improved my knowledge of that day. I had heard stories of the watch that stopped at the time (8.15) and the shadows that were burned into the ground and I saw both at the museum.

The museum owes a lot to the people of Hiroshima who donated their memorabilia and stories to it. It is a museum of the people.

One of the highlights for me was that the Mayor of Hiroshima writes a Letter of Protest to whoever is testing a bomb at any given time throughout the world. Sometimes as much as three letters are sent in a month. Mostly to the Soviet Union and USA. Hiroshima sees itself as an ambassador of peace. It calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

It was a sombre but enlightening afternoon.