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Osaka and Hiroshima

Friday night Ravi and I hopped on the Hikari Shinkansen and went to Osaka. At our stop in Kyoto, we got the “Kyoto… Kyoto desu” sound-bite from “Lost in Translation”. I think I said that about 10 times… 🙂 For those who interested in a translation of the different kinds of Shinkansen, I’m putting together a page. We stayed at the Osaka New Otani, which is pretty nice and overlooks Osaka-jo (Osaka Castle). I took several pics from my room of the castle all lit up at night. We also walked into the park and through the first set of gates and up to the inner bridge that night and I got even more great pics.

Osaka-Jo
On Saturday, Ravi and I went to the castle and took even more pictures. We had to take a relatively abbreviated tour of the castle because it is like 8 stories tall and we only had an hour, but it was still interesting, even for me (although I’ve been to it about 3 times now). We ran back to the hotel and then grabbed a cab to Shin-Osaka station and hopped on the Shinkansen to Hiroshima, which is only about an hour and half away from Osaka. I have been to Hiroshima before on my way to south Honshu, but I had never visited. I had sort of assumed that Hiroshima station was a ways away from bomb’s ground zero, but that turns out not to be the case. It was actually within the 2 km radius of total destruction…

After checking into our hotel (the Hiroshima Prince at the very southern end of the city, overlooking the Pacific Ocean… not bad, has a bowling alley in it, but no DSL), we went downtown to the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Hiroshima Peace Museum. It was raining the whole time we were in Hiroshima, but we didn’t let that stop us. We only had about 2 hours in the museum before it closed, but it was fascinating. Did you know that the mayor of Hiroshima writes a protest letter to every country that tests a nuclear weapon, every time they test? The museum has every letter since the 1970s or so up on the wall… Chris and Bomb Dome

Anyway, for the historically impaired, Hiroshima was the first (and one of only two, Nagasaki being the other) cities to ever be attacked with a nuclear weapon. At least 140,000 people (out of about 350,000 people in Hiroshima) died when a US B-29 bomber (the “Enola Gay”) dropped an atomic bomb called “Little Boy” (because it was thinner than “Fat Man”, the other type of bomb) on top of the center of the city. The museum is down near the hypocenter (less than 500 meters from it). The hypocenter is what “ground zero” for the bomb is called since it was an airburst (at ~500m in the air). The museam is fascinating, but it is also pretty horrific. They have the burned clothes of some of the victims, many of whom were school children who had been drafted into the national labor force to clear firebreaks in downtown Hiroshima in case it was firebombed like Tokyo. I found myself close to tears several times.

Thousands of people were never accounted for. They just went into Hiroshima in the morning and never came home. The ones who did manage to make it home were so badly burned and irradiated, most of them died within a few days or weeks. There are heartbreaking stories of people who were outside the city going into it and finding their loved ones horribly burned and dying, or not finding anything, or finding their loved ones shoe or something… very sad.

Even though the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was fairly primative, it was still 15 kilotons (equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT) yield, which was enough to totally destroy more than a two kilometer radius around the hypocenter. The radius of wide destruction extended another two kilometers beyond that. People within about a mile were badly burned by the bomb, and their skin was burned off. They had a lot of horrific pictures that showed people who’s flesh had basically been turned to charcoal from the 4000C fireball and thermal pulse. Very nasty. There were glass bottles that had been melted, roof tiles (that you could touch) and stuff like that too… Anyway, it was very educational and I took lots of pictures. It is a little known fact that soon after the atomic bombing, moisture coalesced from the radioactive debris and ash and caused a black rain to fall on parts of the city. Many of the horribly burned victims drank the black rain and died soon after from either their burns or radiation sickness.

I bought a book with stories of some of the survivors called “Eyewitness Testimonies: Appeals from the A-Bomb Survivors”. Amazing. One woman was within 260m of the hypocenter and survived (because she was in concrete bank building). I think I will loan it out to my friends because it is worth reading. I know the old saw about if we hadn’t Bomb Dome done this (bombing) then 500,000 GIs would have died invading Japan, but it is hard to visit a place like this and then think that dropping an atomic weapon can ever be a better choice than anything else.

When they kicked us out of the museum (Ravi and I were literally the last people to leave), we walked outside through the peace park toward the atom bomb dome. We took several pictures of this building as it is one of the only buildings to survive the bombing and was left in it’s destroyed state and is a World Heritage site. It is less than 100m from the hypocenter.

Down by the atom bomb dome we found a little Italian bistro (the Japanese love Italian food thank god) which from what I could tell by triangulation was almost exactly under the hypocenter 59 years ago. Good pizza. What a difference 59 years makes.

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