EPTOn my way to the Hiroshima Museum of Art, I passed the local baseball stadium. A long line of people wound around the circular structure. I asked a uniformed man if there was a game that evening. “Hai,” he said, pointing to the line. Excited at the prospect of attending a professional baseball game, I took my place at the back of the line. Ten minutes passed. I grew curious as to the opposing team. “Excuse me,” I asked the young couple in front of me, “speak English? Tonight is Hiroshima and...?”
Fives minutes of miscommunication ensued. The young man was confused as to what I was asking. The young woman was confused, too. Four other people entered the conversation, all of whom were eager to figure out what I was asking. “Hiroshima and... Tokyo, Osaka?” I asked hopefully, by this point turning a bit pink out of embarrassment.
Finally, the young man exclaimed, “Oh, today game Hiroshima and Yokohama!” I thanked him profusely, glad to have my question answered, but mostly glad to have the group's focus off of me. Ten more minutes passed.
“For today game, over there,” the young man said, pointing to an open ticket window with only a single person in line. I blinked.
“Tickets for today's game are over there?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Arigato gozaimasu,” I said, bowing slightly. Why the young man had taken so long to offer up this information was beyond me, but I was glad to have avoided an hour-long wait in Hiroshima heat only to be told that I had been waiting in the wrong line.
The woman in the ticket window showed me a diagram of the stadium's seating areas and asked me where I would like to sit. I chose the block just behind the home team's dugout, down the third base line—great seats. I assumed the ticket would be expensive, but seeing a baseball game in Japan was an opportunity I doubted I'd ever have again; I was willing to splurge. The woman asked for 2,000 yen, approximately $20. I couldn't get my wallet out quickly enough. $20 for those seats? In the United States, that's unthinkable.
My guidebooks indicated that the Hiroshima Museum of Art, my original destination, was only a short distance to the north. I wandered in that direction and encountered a veritable amoeba of aging Japanese tourists attired in elegant dresses and well-cut suits. The crowd was easily 3,000 strong, and they were all going south through the sports complex—hundreds of meters of tourists crowded onto a 20-foot-wide street. I felt conspicuous and unwelcome as I fought through the crowd in a fruitless attempt to find the art museum. Annoyed and wanting nothing more than to be alone, I made my way towards a Chinese-style garden located across the street.
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The garden.
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The garden.
The garden was deserted, with two quaint gazebos overlooking a tranquil pond. I rested for a moment and contemplated my next move. The Peace Memorial Park and Hiroshima Castle were in opposite directions. If I hurried, I could take in both destinations, but with my camera running low on battery power and the weather being especially hot and humid, I elected to proceed directly to the Peace Memorial Park.
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This is as close as I got to Hiroshima Castle.
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The A-Bomb Dome.
I didn't think the A-Bomb Dome would affect me as much as it did. Every tourist around the dome, myself included, snapped a single photo and then stood in awe of the setting. Knowing that an atomic bomb had exploded a couple hundred meters above our heads, killing 70,000 people instantly and demolishing everything with a kilometer radius, was disquieting. I thought of all the people who know and care about me, of all the people I know and care about. Then I tried to imagine each of those innumerable connections severed—70,000 times over. Defending or condemning the dropping of the bomb was not on my mind. This wasn't the time for justification or finger-pointing. All I could think about was how tragic it was that actions of this magnitude were ever considered, let alone carried out. And Hiroshima was hardly an isolated incident. Warfare is tragedy. The ability to level a metropolis with a ten-foot-long object—I didn't know what to think.
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The Peace Memorial Park.
Next, I went to the Peace Memorial Museum. The many Japanese patrons filed through the exhibits in orderly, single file. Still reeling from the A-Bomb Dome, I found myself skipping many of the more uncomfortable sections of the museum. The museum's goal seemed to be to humanize the victims of the atomic bomb. No person was a statistic. Full names, brief biographies, and family histories were included where available. Tragic stories about the “A-bomb orphans” and ten-year-olds dying of leukemia abounded. It was too much to absorb. I touched some formerly-radioactive objects and tried to avoid the tales of those who took hours, days, or years to pass away.
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A scale recreation of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
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Some background.
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Some background.
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Art done by a survivor.
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Some background.
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The Peace Park.
On the way out of the museum, a Japanese man in a dark suit asked if I thought there would ever be a world without war. I said no. “I would like there to be,” he said. “I have accepted Jesus Christ into my heart. Do you know about the teachings of Jesus Christ?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Would you like to hear more?” he asked, offering me a pamphlet.
“I appreciate what are you are doing here, and best of luck to you. But for me, I don't think that's the answer,” I said, trying to be as diplomatic as possible. I shook his hand and bowed as we parted.
Further down the road, there was a small shrine with a wooden sign that read, “All people, by nature, own nothing.” I stopped for a moment and thought about the desire for power that drives people and nations into conflict. Maybe a world without material possession was the only answer, which to me, meant that there was no answer. I walked back to the Peace Pot restaurant and treated myself to an especially large dinner, complete with a chocolate-covered dessert.
