As Andrew Marr says in his History of the World, Hiroshima is a big word.
Today I am taking a day trip to Hiroshima from Kyoto, making use of the spare time I have ahead of the World Parkinson’s Congress which starts tomorrow.
Hiroshima is a modern, vibrant city with a hip restaurant and nightlife scene. But I am not here for fusion cuisine or trendy bars. I am here for one thing only: to visit the Peace Memorial Park and Museum that mark the world-changing event that took place on 6 August 1945.
The world’s first atomic bomb to be detonated in anger killed an estimated 70,000 inhabitants of the city (a third of its population) instantly and a similar number in the days, weeks, months and years that followed through radiation poisoning. Many of the latter suffered slow, painful, horrendous deaths.
I have been to the Peace Memorial Museum before, about ten years ago, but it has been completely revamped since my last visit. The museum now focusses more on the human element whereas previously it was somewhat more technical. In both cases there are a number of artefacts preserved from that day, the most iconic of which is a watch with its hands fused to the exact time the bomb exploded.
Among the many moving stories is that of Sadako Sasaki, an 11 year-old girl with Leukaemia, who believed she would be cured if she folded a thousand paper cranes, a Japanese symbol of longevity. She died before finishing the task but her classmates took up the challenge and her story became an inspiration across the nation. Paper cranes are still folded in her honour today.
People sometimes forget that a second bomb was dropped three days later, on the industrial city of Nagasaki, thereby bringing an early end to the Second World War in the Pacific.
The crew of the bomber Enola Gay that carried the first weapon had no doubt they were doing the right thing. It is said that the abrupt termination of the war prevented a likely invasion of Japan perhaps saving as many as a million casualties. Moreover, the Americans had no sympathy for the Japanese, with their Kamikaze pilots, surprise attack at Pearl Harbour and legendary cruelty to their prisoners of war.
Today, with the benefit of hindsight, we view things differently. It seems inconceivable that such an act of mass murder of civilians could be justified in a contemporary context. My personal view of that period of history is that whilst the first bomb was probably justified, the dropping of the second bomb so soon was unnecessarily brutal to the civilian population.
Needless to say, the Japanese are a very different people today. The museum is packed with children in school uniform earnestly scribbling notes onto their clipboards. They offer prayers at the memorial outside the museum. An inscription next to the memorial reads in several languages: “Let all the souls here rest in peace for we shall not repeat this evil.” As a result of Hiroshima, several generations of Japanese have now been brought up to be pacifists rather than aggressors.
A visit to the museum can be emotionally draining. The last time I was here (with Clara), a middle-aged woman approached us by the A-bomb dome, a sturdy concrete building that was close to the centre of the explosion but managed to remain standing, though badly damaged. In broken English she told us about the events of 6 August 1945, referring to a folder of photographs and diagrams. We were instinctively cautious, assuming she was a bad tour guide touting for a tip. At the end of her monologue, she explained that the reason she speaks to tourists was in memory of her father, who was a child when the bomb hit.
Her aim, quite simply, was to help the world never to forget. Such encounters etch themselves deep in one’s memories. I see a similar woman today talking to a group of schoolchildren – perhaps it is the same person continuing to spread her message one individual at a time.
I emerge in contemplative mood from the museum and park, my mind filled with thoughts of the shocking use of science and technology as an instrument of man’s destruction of his own kind.
Tomorrow, as I join several thousand others at the Parkinson’s congress, I expect to hear many examples of how science and technology are being used for the precise opposite: to bring an end to the suffering of millions.
Although we still have many conflicts raging across the globe today, I believe we live in a far better world than two generations ago. A world where individuals matter. A world yes, with some pockets of evil, but where the vast majority people want to do positive things. A world where science and technology are overwhelmingly tools for good.
Today I gawp at mankind at its most destructive. Tomorrow I hope to be inspired by human endeavour at its most positive.
