Today was a day trip to Hiroshima, a name that is all too familiar to us if we payed attention to history class. Our first stop was the monument in an alleyway, depicting the hypocenter of the atomic bomb (A-bomb as it is referred to around the monuments/city)
From there we made our way to the only standing building, or what remains, known as the A-Bomb Dome. From there we made our way through the peace park and witnessed a ceremony of several groups of school children contributing their handmade cranes. The tradition of folding paper cranes for peace began with Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who developed leukemia from radiation exposure after the bombing. She believed that if she could fold 1,000 cranes, she would be granted a wish to recover. Though she died before completing them all, her story inspired people worldwide to fold cranes as symbols of peace and hope. Now children from all over Japan and beyond send thousands of colorful paper cranes to Hiroshima.
We then took a tour of the museum, but refrained from taking any photos from within because you can see most of it online, but also because the weight of the museum was heavy and we were very focused on the experience of seeing artifacts, photos, and videos of the atomic bomb and its aftermath.
After the museum we walked towards the castle and took in the local sights. An observation we made was that the city was completely rebuilt in the 80 years since our visit and the bombing. The castle we were standing in had been lost from the explosion and we now stood in a recreation of the castle. Though some of the original foundations remain, some parts were rebuilt to be as historically accurate as they could be.