In a cool autumn air, it was a very pleasant run. The total distance was about 10 km, but because I stopped to look around and take photos, it took about 1 hour 20 min. altogether. Hiroshima is a very clean, nice city, with population of almost 1.2 million people.
The Memorial Park is spacious and truly "peaceful". It is amazing that before the atomic bomb destroyed it, this area was the most populous district of the city.
Approaching the Atomic bomb memorial service monument - in line with the A-Bomb Dome
The Statue of "Child of Atomic Bomb", surrounded by exhibition containers of "thousand cranes" of origami given by visitors from all over the world.
A statue of a mother carrying a dying child - also surrounded by "thousand cranes"
Remains of Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall - it is preserved as "Atomic-Bomb Dome". It is one of UNESCO's World Heritage site.
Inside of the building is left a rubble.
A photograph of the area around the A-Bomb Dome taken in October, 1945 - two months after the bomb explosion (from an explanatory board next to the Dome).
Here's what now-Peace Park looked like until right before the bomb was dropped. Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall is seen on the right side of the T-shaped bridge on the center-far side which Enola Gay used as the target. (This photo was taken from a Wiki site)
4 comments:
Hopefully you got a chance to see the park around Hiroshima Castle. The castle and moats are not nearly the size of Osaka's, but the proportions and settings and just beautiful.
One weekend some Marine buddies and I were staying at an inn maybe 1/2 mile from the Peace Park. I got separated from the group and ended-up looking all night for the inn.
I was in roughly the right area, (in fact I walked right past the place a bunch of times, but it was so late they had locked up.)so I searched by quartering the area in ever-expanding rings. I noticed that there was a line where the buildings went from modern (masonry) to old-fashioned wood frame. I finally realized the reason. All the modern construction was post-blast. The old buildings were the ones far enough from the epicenter to have survived.
I did jog around the moat of and inside the castle ground. It is a much smaller fortress compared to Osaka, but it is elegant and nice. I also visited a very nice Japanese garden called Shukkei-En (http://apike.ca/japan_shukkeien.html). They were having a pretty chrysanthemum exhibition and of course, just walking around it was very pleasant. I decided to just write about the Peace Park this time because there'd be just too many photos. I will introduce them in the future.
Sounds like you had quite an adventure when you were in Hiroshima. It is such a peaceful city with people so nice - but throughout the city, there are reminders and scars left by the war.
Since 1945, Japan has not experienced wars. I just hope it'll stay this way.
Good!!
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