Hiroshima

Right next to Auschwitz and Pripyat; if it only was easier approachable; it should be a must go destination for anyone. This place bares an unbelievable historic value, luckily it is being preserved with great care.

Museum in Hiroshima goes into a lot of detail about the history and circumstances of the explosion, you can spend hours walking around and reading materials about it, there are many items salvaged from the site like actual human remnants, personal items, bricks, tiles, melted glass jars - all bearing effects of the disaster, some of them you can touch and inspect yourself. There are also survivors, now volunteering at the museum answering the important questions. It's all very well organized and you can walk away with a lot of information's of what actually happened here. Thousands of people visit the museum daily which is quite comforting, as the knowledge is passed on to the young, few of which fell into tears right in front of my eyes.

A watch belonging to Akito Kawagoe is one of many meaningful exhibits here. It stopped at 8:15 exact time of the explosion, Akito donated it to the museum.

One of the most striking exhibits in the museum is Shin's Tricycle. The story behind the exhibit goes as follows:

Shin a three-year old boy, was playing on his tricycle when the bomb has been detonated. His father Nobuo found the barely alive Shin still holding onto the tricycle's handlebars and trapped under the rubble of their destroyed home. Nobuo tried to save his son but despite his efforts Shin died that evening. Nobuo buried Shin with his beloved tricycle. Forty years later, Nobuo exhumed Shin and his two sisters, who also died in the bombing, in order to give them a proper burial at a cemetery. He donated the tricycle to the Hiroshima Peace Museum, where it is currently on display.

Main building, everyone is coming to see and photograph is A-bomb Dome, thanks to it's concrete construction it survived nearly direct hit of the atomic blast, here is some history i've taken from the information boards placed to it's side:

And here it is today, people preserving the building made sure every brick remained at the same location from when the explosion happened, and tried to move as little as possible during conservation works, so Dome looks almost exactly the same from 6th of August 1945.

Right next to the A-dome stands the Aioi-bashi Bridge it was intended to be the bombing centre point marked as 063096, as it was easily recognizable from the air. Bomb hit very close to it.

Here we can see the bridge after bombing, there's a huge reproduction of that picture in the main museum, there's also a little figure standing right to the far left end of the photograph which caught my eye.

It was quite surreal to walk underneath Aioi today.

From here you can make your way to the museum through the Peace Memorial Park, scattered with sculptures, main one being a concrete Memorial Cenotaph designed by Kenzo Tange to commemorate the 200,000 victims of the attack.

I was honoured to visit Hiroshima (it wasn't planned in any way) during it's 68th Lantern Ceremony, which commemorates people died in the explosion by floating thousands of paper lanterns down the river, you can find a separate report about it here.

Thanks for reading.