0k/h--that links the major cities on Honshu and Kyushu (the large island, and one of the smaller ones).Notice how conspicuously large the USA's arsenal is...
Really, though, the point of the exhibit is to show how scarily easy it would be for us to destroy humankind...if one bomb from 60 years ago can do that much damage, think of how much damage this many modern nuclear bombs could do. A Planet-of-the-Apes scenario used to seem pretty far-fetched, but seeing this in the museum still made me think.
The next room had all the bomb artifacts. The first exhibit at the entrance was kind of jarring--the hallway was set up to look like the bomb had just gone off, and a panorama was shown outside "windows" of the destruction (this picture is credited to http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/index_e2.html):
The following artifacts were all donated by the relatives of A-bomb victims, most of them children. There were a lot of school uniforms--kids from middle school onwards were mobilized, demolishing buildings to create "fire-breaks" (to stop the spread of fire in case Hiroshima was fire-bombed). (As 
somewhat of an aside, the A-bomb survivor who told us about her experiences said about this how ironic it was that they were taking such precautions against bombs, with no idea of the horror that the U.S. was planning for them...That just made me cry.) Anyway, because the kids were pretty close to the city center, so many of them died or disappeared, only to have their belongings identified (but not always their bodies) during rebuilding. Each artifact also has a small history next to it, telling about the owner (most of whom died). Above them are disturbing and very sad photographs of hibakusha (被爆者)--atomic bomb victims--with fifth- and sixth-degree burns, hypodermal bleeding, and other horrific maladies.
The last exhibit (in the same room) was as frightening, but much less emotionally stressful. It displayed the science end of the bomb: it was hot enough to melt glass and bend steel, etc etc. It was really cool to see stacks of little glass jars that had half-melted together, and steel shutters that had been bent even though they were 2.7 km (that's about 1 1/2 miles, for all you non-metric people) from where the bomb hit.
Looking back, I don't think I really felt much when I was first seeing the museum. I blame this partly on my crunch for time (self-imposed, can't really complain) and partly on the sheer magnitude of what you're being forced to see. It wasn't really until after we had the talk from the A-bomb survivor (I'll get to it, I promise!) that I even started to think about it, and I don't think it really hit me until I was writing my reflections paper for class 3 days later. I re-read some of the exhibit descriptions on the website, and though I'm usually good at keeping it in, I started crying...there are so many heart-wrenching stories there, things you think you wouldn't see outside of a soap-opera-turned-horror-movie...except they were real, every one of them.
The A-bomb survivor who talked to us--forgive me for not remembering her name (and if you're reading this and do remember, please tell me!!!) was a 12-year-old working at a demolition site about 1.5 km (.93 miles) from the bomb. She was thrown back by the shock wave and burnt so badly that even now, her fingers are permanently bent (though most of her body's damage has been repaired). Though she was separated from her classmates, she found one of them--who insisted on being left behind after she collapsed and could walk no farther (she still sees this girl in her dreams). She's now in remission from breast cancer, caused by the radiation she's been exposed to during and after the bomb, and even now she worries about herself and her brother's children (who she raised) and even their children, and the effects the bomb will have on her. Though she's about 76 years old, she works as an advocate for world nuclear disarmament.
I don't feel any responsibility as an American--call me what you will--for the bomb; my parents weren't even born at that point, never mind myself. On a personal level, then, I kind of feel detached from the whole thing. And on an emotional/psychological level I know that no matter what books I read, what movies I see, or what museums I visit, I will never even begin to understand what happened in Hiroshima, because (lets face it) my life has been, and probably always will be, happy and safe relative to the apocalypse that happened in Hiroshima. Still, seeing the museum and the peace park for real, rather than just hearing about it; hearing a second hibakusha's testimony (the first was during Middlebury Japanese Summer School '07); and getting to see Hiroshima as it is today (everything's so new, relative to the rest of Japan, because nothing was left) brought me that much closer to wrapping my head around what happened...which I think is important not so much for the sake of the past, but for the sake of the future--for which I do feel a responsibility.
On a hopeful note, these are the feelings of the younger generation:
For those of you who don't read Japanese, this says "War is Bad!" in Kansai dialect. It was written by an elementary school child.
Sorry about the seriousness of this post...I think it comes with the topic.>> The next one, about Miyajima, will be lighter, I promise.
