So day three in Japan:
I woke up early that morning in my hotel and digested the news about Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash, which was all anyone on the Internet was talking about. But I had a lot I wanted to do that day, so I got up and was out of the door by 8. I walked back across the river and into the peace park. It was another bright, clear day, and pretty warm for late January – apparently Hiroshima has a very mild climate. It’s the type of city I wouldn’t mind living in. Lots of water, lots of green, lots of mild temperatures. I went straight to the bomb museum, which is pretty well done. It has lots of really great before and after photos of the city, and since they’re all of the places that you can see in the modern day all around you, it’s very relatable. There’s a ton of artifacts from victims and survivors of the bomb, and of course hundreds of personal stories. It does a good job giving the Japanese perspective.
However, it is definitely the Japanese perspective. There’s no mention at all made of how the United States and Japan came to be at war, or of the atrocities Japanese soldiers had done and were continuing to do throughout Asia, or of the Japanese’ fanatical determination not to surrender in places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa. So, while I do feel sorry for the victims, most of whom were innocent women and children, I don’t regret the bombing still. Had to be done. *
The museum is two floors, and ends with a massive room about the history of nuclear weapons and a nuclear non-proliferation campaign. A lot of good information in there, most of which I already knew. I poked through the gift shop and got some small souvenirs that I could carry with me, some of which I’ll send along to you to remember Hiroshima by. After a couple hours in the museum I went back into the city.
Today I had a goal: Near Hiroshima is Kure, an old Japanese naval arsenal. That was why Hiroshima was targetted, because it’s such an important naval base, and you can really see why when you’re there. Hiroshima Bay is beautiful, and calm, and a great place to train sailors and keep your navy. Very similar to Pearl Harbor. Today, Kure has a couple of museums – the Yamato museum is dedicated to the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force Museum next door to the modern Japanese navy. I really wanted to visit both those places. So, I started walking back to the train station.
I walked everywhere I couldn’t take a train. It was about a mile between my hotel, right next to the peace park in downtown Hiroshima, and Hiroshima Station, which is northeast of the old city (right on the edge of the blast zone – soldiers on the steps of the station were killed by the bomb). So it’s about a 40-minute walk through the streets, but I had some sights I wanted to see along the way. Walking is a great way to explore a new place, you really get a feel for everything. Taking a bus or a train leaves you disconnected. So, I walked north, then down into a huge underground shopping area (the same one that connects with the train station, in fact – you can walk underground the entire way if you wanted to), and a few blocks later came to Hiroshima Castle.
Hiroshima Castle was built during Japan’s feudal era 400 years ago, when samurai and warlords battled each other for control of the country. It was never besieged, but is a great example of traditional castle architecture. During imperial era it was an army headquarters, and had lots of modern military buildings and bunkers built on the grounds, but most of that was leveled by the bomb and it’s been rebuilt in the classical style since. I walked up to the castle and the moat, fended off a guy trying to sell me a boat ride along hte moat, and went inside. There’s an open space just behind the gates, for gathering troops, and you can go and walk inside the walls. The man behind the desk didn’t trust me to take off my own shoes properly for the polished wooden floors.
Further inside, in the inner keep, there was some kind of church service or festival – this was Sunday morning, after all. There’s a huge open area inside the castle now that’s mostly gardens. I explored the grounds, eventually making my way to the main building, which is about 5 stories tall. It’s very cramped inside, but it’s been turned into a museum on the history of the castle, samurai, Hiroshima, etc. No pictures allowed, sadly. I got to hold a katana, a traditional samurai sword, which was cool – it weighs about as much as a baseball bat. Not heavy at all. The top floor of the castle is an observation deck and I was able to look out over most of the city.
After a few hours at the castle museum, I left by the rear gate headed east for the train station. It was a gorgeous day for a walk, as I dodged streetcars and other traffic along the way. I passed by Hiroshima city garden and decided, what the heck, I’ll duck in for an hour or so and do a quick tour. The garden was designed by a famous imperial landscape artist back in the 1700s, and it was a sight to see.
But while I was there, a trio of old women suddenly stepped into my path before I could really get started and shoved a piece of paper into my hands. They didn’t speak a word of English and I only know about 5 words of Japanese, but eventually we worked out that they were giving me a gift. They flagged down a young woman walking by with her husband – she had taken English in high school and was pretty good at it. I learned that they wanted me to come to a traditional Japanese tea ceremony with them. We went and waited in a nearby courtyard for a while, then I shuffled in with them and about 100 other people into a tea house. It was crowded, as everyone packed into a room about the size of our kitchen and living room combined. The architecture was traditional – sliding paper walls, tatami mats on the floor, almost no furniture. I sat down in the front row and watched as a woman in a traditional kimono came out and started preparing the tea in front of us.
They had a bunch of other guys out back making tea by the barrelful, though, and soon enough the wall next to me slid back and a guy started passing me tea cups to pass along to people inside. Everyone got a cup and some rice cake. The tea was thick, sludgy, and green, and looked really strange, but it tasted amazing. Best cup of tea I’ve ever had, in fact. During the ceremony, a narrator explained the significance of all the ritual, but it was entirely in Japanese so I have no idea what anything meant. The whole affair took about two hours, then we all shuffled out. I thanked the women, took a picture with the woman and her husband who had been my interpreter, and then finally took my walk around the garden, which is gorgeous. You’d really like it, Dad – it’s the sort of place you’d really have fun designing and taking care of. Winding paths, landscaped bushes and trees, water features and quirky bridges, sculpted hills, lanterns, shrines, tons of koi fish in the pond. It was wonderful. Finally, about 2 in the afternoon, way behind schedule, I headed back out for the train station.
The ride down to Kure was pleasant, right along the bay. We passed fishing ships and docks, markets, boat sheds, marinas – all the things you need to support life on the water. We rolled into Kure itself not an hour later, which just had a little 2-platform station (Hiroshima Station has more than 24 platforms). Lots of signs pointed me straight to the Yamato museum, and I took an elevated skybridge direct from the train station through a department store and to the museum. Outside the museum there’s a massive life-sized deck replicating half the Yamato (the largest battleship ever built, quite a bit larger than our Iowa class), and across the street at the JMSDF Museum there’s an old submarine. I had lots of fun poking around the replica, which has children and dogs playing around it, then went inside.
Inside, the museum’s centerpiece is a massive 1:20 model of Yamato, but it has tons of rooms dedicated to the history of the Japanese navy. There was an exhibit on Yamato and Musashi’s last voyages (the two sister ships were the biggest battleships ever built, specifically designed to be able to beat anything the Americans could send through the Panama canal. Musashi was sunk at Leyte Gulf, Yamato at Okinawa, both by carrier planes. Oops), dozens of models of famous Japanese warships, and a room with a real Zero, midget submarine, and human torpedo inside. I spent hours wandering around looking at all the ships…just a bit too long, in fact. At 4:40 I went across the street (after buying some more souvenirs, including a shirt, from the shop) to the JMSDF museum…to find out that its last admission was at 4:30. Bummer.
So instead I went on an adventure. I ate dinner at a little restaurant in the department store, then hit the streets of Kure. I read that there’s great views of the city at night from the mountains outside town, so as the sun was setting I started walking. The further I got from the train station, the less busy the streets got, and the smaller the buildings. Soon, as it was getting dark I was off the beaten path and into little neighborboods, with narrow, winding streets and traditional Japanese homes all around me. I kept having to duck off the road to avoid traffic, since there was no sidewalk. And I was constantly going up, up, and up as I climbed the mountains that are everywhere in Japan. Soon, the last house was behind me, and even the last streetlight. By now it was full dark and I could barely see the road, but I was walking next to a good-sized creek that let me know I was on the right path. My main worry was getting hit by a car in the darkness, but there was seriously nothing out there. Finally, at about 7, I made it to a good sized ridge and could turn and look back at the city, which lay below me all lit up. I could see a good ways out to sea, too, which was, of course, mostly dark.
It was a fun exploration, but it was late and I was tired, so I walked the long, long way back into the neighborhoods and wound through them until I made it back to the main roads, then back to the train station and home to Hiroshima. I got there about 9, then walked some more (past the castle at night now) and hit my hotel by 10, where I was pretty quickly asleep. It was my last night in Hiroshima – the destination for Monday was Osaka.
But first I planned to go back to Kure and hit the museum that I missed. I’d never get another chance, so why not?
* This text is drawn from an email to my father, who had asked me to give up an update in email form on what I’d been up. We’ve talked WW2 and the Bomb many times, so I’m skipping over the argument in favor of using atomic weapons. If you want to have that discussion with me, feel free to message me, or better yet, join me over a cup of coffee some day when I’m home and the pandemic is past.
Gwangju Dreaming 