Nuclear Family Outing

My parents are making their first ever visit to Japan, so it's back on the Shinkansen again as we make the trip west to Hiroshima, just an hour away on the sleek 500 series. A largely non-descript industrial city prior to August 6th 1945, Hiroshima was incinerated, and instantly redefined, when it became the recipient of the world's first atomic bomb. The 'city of water' - so called because it straddles the frond-like delta of the Oota River - in an instant became one of the most powerful images of the twentieth century.

I'd read John Hersey's 'Hiroshima' at school. Commissioned by The New Yorker in 1946, Hersey interviewed six survivors of the blast to relate a tragically human dimension to the effects of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; in stark contrast, at the time, to the mostly statistical, political and questionably moralistic reporting of the event. It's both a fascinating and chilling read, so it was an eerie experience stepping off a tram at Genbaku Dome-mae to find the remnants of what used to be the Prefectural Commercial Exhibition building, and which is now simply known as 'The A-Bomb Dome'.

The Peace Memorial Park covers a sizable area - previously the Nakajima district of the city. Opened in 1955, the Peace Memorial Museum tells the story of Hiroshima before the bombing and of the aftermath. Despite the grim subject matter, it is not overtly grisly, although it maybe dwells a little too much on the statistics of nuclear fission - all of them very, very big, by the way - towards the end of the tour, turning it into a bit of a fourth-grade physics lesson in the process. But the message is crystal clear - nuclear weapons are very, very bad - and not surprisingly it's a lot more compelling coming from the memoirs of the hibakusha (survivors of the blast, of whom there are still an estimated 80,000 living in Hiroshima today) than the massed ranks of the Birkenstock-shod middle classes.

But life goes on. The fear that nothing organic could survive the aftermath of the nuclear bombing for many generations has proved to be unfounded, and Hiroshima is a thriving metropolis looking ahead to the future that cannot, and maybe should not, forget the legacy of its past. As evidenced by the entry in the local listings magazine for the Hiroshima Youth Hostel: "A-bomb survivors share their experiences the first Saturday of each month from 19:00. Followed by origami project. All welcome."