Hiroshima

Oddly, or perhaps fittingly, Hiroshima is the most peaceful and pleasant city I've been to in Japan. There is a calmness to it that certainly is not part of Tokyo or Osaka but also not even smaller cities like Kyoto and Fukuoka. My entire time in Hiroshima I had a thought running through my mind: "Every American who can, needs to visit this place". The Peace Memorial Museum is extraordinarily powerful. Notably, the American blockbuster movie "Oppenheimer" that came out this past summer is not being shown in Japan...

The "Abomb Dome" lit up at night. Probably the most important monument in the city to the bombing. The bomb exploded ~1000 feet above the city, so the greatest force was in the downward direction, which is why the roof was blown off but some walls remain.

One of the other few buildings that remains standing from pre-Abomb was a bank. 

What Hiroshima looked like shortly after the bombing. The canals remain in the same place today; it was eerie to walk along them after seeing this picture and learning that people on fire threw themselves into the canals.

I was amazed to see that an elementary school building also survived the blast and is still used as a school today. There is a small museum connected to it, where I took this photo. Many families had evacuated to the countryside during the war, as they knew cities were prime targets for bombings (though they had no conception of a bomb that could destroy an entire city).

Peace Memorial Park, with the Abomb dome in the background. This place is powerful and I strongly encourage anyone who can to visit.

I couldn't help but notice the uncanny resemblance between the tattered clothes of Abomb victims (above) and concentration camp victims that are now on display in WWII/Holocaust museums.

Melted statue of Buddha on display in Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima

A Taiko drum from the school that survived but was blown out.

Model showing Abomb dome before and after Abomb on display in Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima.

This was probably the most impactful sign I read at the Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshima. Why didn't the Potsdam Declaration include a guarantee of the continuance of the emperor system for post-war Japan? Perhaps a lack of cultural understanding contributed... The Peace Memorial Museum advocates to rid the world of all nuclear weapons. It is a powerful message that Hiroshima sends to the world.

This is a memorial to all of the children who were Abomb victims in Peace Memorial Park. Since most of the men were off at war, most of the Abomb victims were women and children. It was very moving to see Japanese children come on a field trip to the memorial, sing songs and place paper cranes ("orizuru") to honor the victims.