During winter break, I visited my family in Japan, and one of the experiences my grandfather was particularly eager to share with me was a trip to Hiroshima.
As all Japanese kids do, I had grown up learning about the atomic bombings, but I never imagined how much this visit would affect me. The stories, images, and artifacts I saw on that day didn’t just teach me history—they made me feel its weight, its pain, and ultimately, the strength of the people who lived it
We visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum on a bright and sunny winter day, with not a single cloud in the sky.
Entering the museum brings you immediately into the “Hiroshima on August 6” exhibition. As soon as I walked into the exhibit, an eerie silence set in. Everybody, including the little children clutching onto their mothers, fell silent. Except for the occasional sniffle and shuffling, it was dead silent.
The exhibition started off slowly, showing a panorama of pre-war Hiroshima. The black-and-white images depicted the lifestyle of civilians as well as popular landmarks of the city. As we slowly continued walking through the museum, it felt as if we were experiencing the bombing in real time. The exhibition followed a chronological order, making each room a step forward in time.
The next few rooms were filled with grandiose images and accounts of what immediately happened after the bomb was dropped. An entire panel in the room was filled with an ominous mushroom cloud, photographed with a blurry film camera.
Although I have been exposed to the harsh reality of the atomic bombings in Japan from an early age, nothing could have prepared me for what I would see in the next room.
There were countless images of young women and children burned to the point where their bodies seemed unrecognizable, hanging between a liminal space of life and death. Although the photographs were jarring enough, the artwork was something else. Several pieces of artwork depicted burning people, mangled children, and a hellish landscape.
Although the images in the exhibition were shocking and graphic, the stories of the ones that survived, and the ones that didn’t, were truly heartbreaking and unbearable. Here is the one that was most memorable to me:
N was once a hardworking fisherman.
That day… N was exposed to the bomb at his building demolition worksite. He suffered severe burns over his body.
After two years, N recovered enough to go fishing once in a while, but that didn’t last long.
His wife, who had desperately worked to sustain the family, died in March 1951.
N decided to kill himself and his children.
He spent what little money he had on rice and fish for the children’s last supper. He waited for night to fall, then put his hands around the neck of one of his children. But he was unable to squeeze. When dawn broke, he had no choice but to live.
(Taken from https://hpmmuseum.jp/)
As I read this story on the museum wall, I felt an immense sense of dread and hopelessness overcome me. I could not possibly fathom what would drive a father to kill his own children with his bare hands.
It felt as though I was looking at something I was not supposed to–an invasion of privacy. A tattered brown rucksack, one splattered with radioactive rain and blood, belonged to a 10-year-old schoolboy. A seemingly brand-new navy robe, made for a husband by a loving wife, which the husband never lived to try it on. A wristwatch with the time “8:15,” forever frozen at the moment the bomb detonated above the skies of Hiroshima.
This level of intimacy with the tragedy felt deeply eerie, as I was only separated from these artifacts by a thin layer of glass.
After I left the building and walked across the bridge to the train station, the surroundings felt eerily morbid, filled with an unsettling irony that lingered in the air. The sunny skies had not a single cloud, and the air was filled with the refreshing coolness of a December afternoon. I could faintly hear the sound of children playing in a nearby park, running around and screaming.
But 80 years ago, on a warm summer morning, a single flash in the sky ended the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The river below the bridge would soon overflow with little kids and their mothers, all fighting for the water they believed would treat their burns. Eventually, the mothers would lose their children in the infested swamp that was the river, drowning in a mixture of thick blood, bodily fluids, and toxic radiation that was the Motoyasu River.
Hiroshima is not a city of tragedy. It is a city of hope and resilience. As a Japanese person, I want my country to not be remembered by the tragedies and horrific events that occured on our land, but by the strength and community of the people who brought back our country to what it is today. Hiroshima is not a city of tragedy. It is a city of hope and resilience.
Although I left the exhibition long ago, I believe that the weight of it will never fall off my shoulders.
