What are the Hiroshima & Nagasaki museums & memorials like? [Archive]

Kaikou

08-05-2005, 05:46 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Njr Scrawl said:
As Saturday 6th August is the 60th anniversary of the A-Bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, I'm wondering if anyone here has visited Hiroshima & Nagasaki today, & if you can say what their museums & memorials are like?

[/ QUOTE ]

Just a reminder to those who aren't aware; Saturday at 8:00PM EST on the Discovery channel they are having a special on the Hiroshima bomb.

I went to the Hiroshima Memorial Museum recentely and it was very extensive on everything pertaining to what happened. It has before and after models of the city, survivor testomonies, documents and information about the bomb before it was dropped, and displays on the aftermath. It has a large section devoted to how it affected the people and showed exactly what the bomb did to the city itself.

All around the museum itself there are memorials. Right near by there is the Children's memorial monument and a monument with a stone coffin that represents all those who lost their lives from the bomb being dropped.

BonifaceVIII

08-05-2005, 06:28 PM

You know there's an important date coming up when right-wing extremists start defacing memorials. (http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=150795246&p=y5x79595z) Despicable.

tstidm1

08-05-2005, 07:29 PM

Every time Otakon falls during those dates. They never say anything about them. I think one of these times they should give a moment of silence or something during the weekend it falls because that is a key moment in Japanese History or Culture. That would be amongst my places to visit in Japan.

philnicau

08-05-2005, 09:22 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Njr Scrawl said:
As Saturday 6th August is the 60th anniversary of the A-Bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, I'm wondering if anyone here has visited Hiroshima & Nagasaki today, & if you can say what their museums & memorials are like?

[/ QUOTE ]

I've been to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and feel that while both Museums are a emotionally draining experience, the Nagasaki one was more powerful in expressing the Horror of the Bomb and its lingering effects.
I've always felt that Hiroshima has been slightly sanitised for the Tourist market, also Hiroshima is the more political of the two, in fact the Japanese often describe the rememberances as Shouting Hiroshima and Praying Nagasaki.
But this being said both are strong statements about the effect of an Atomic Bomb, and suprisingly both give a fairly balanced view on why it was used.
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/top_e.html
http://www1.city.nagasaki.nagasaki.jp/na-bomb/museum/museume01.html

Njr Scrawl

08-06-2005, 05:06 AM

Thanks. I'll do a complete virtual tour of Hiroshima museum today & Nagasaki on the 9th.

Barefoot Gen is one of the shows at the Hiroshima museum I see.

Natsufuku no shojotachi (Girls in Summer Uniforms) is another. Apparently it was released on the 43rd anniversary of Hiroshima's A-bombing in 1988. A Madhouse Productions animé, 50 mins long in memory of "the girls who lost their lives to the atom bomb." (Directed By Keiko Sugiura. Animated By Toshio Hirata, Masao Murayama. Written By Makiko Nakadate.)

Raja

08-06-2005, 12:52 PM

I've been to the Hiroshima Peace Park twice. I wrote up my impressions on my blog, here (http://www.rob.snookles.com/2003/05/well-ive-been-back-from-hiroshima-for.html) and here (http://www.rob.snookles.com/2005/01/hiroshima-in-winter.html).

mrgazpacho

08-07-2005, 03:01 AM

Nice writeups, Raja. I think I've read the first one before /images/graemlins/happy.gif

Njr Scrawl

08-07-2005, 04:18 AM

I've been to the Auschwitz museum, & that is a different kind of memorial to the hell mankind can create for himself. If I get to Japan someyear, I shall pilgrimage to both Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

For the A-bombs, I think the real differenciating horror between what happened & the result of fire bombing Tokyo, which was also totally devastated in areas is that;
1) a single bomb could do so much devastation
2) The effects of radiation on human beings. (This also affects attitudes to the safety of nuclear power stations, especially after Chernobyl, & fears of non-nuclear weapons which are designed to contaminate by spreading radioactive material.)

There is an account of seeing the bombing of Nagasaki by Leonard Cheshire VC, who was in a, or the, B-29 when the bomb was dropped.

arromdee

08-08-2005, 01:36 PM

There's a chapter on Hiroshima in Dave Barry Does Japan (he usually has one serious chapter in his books). He mentions that it gives the impression that Hiroshima was bombed out of the blue with little relation to anything else in the war.

Elendil

08-08-2005, 08:24 PM

If you want the best book about Hiroshima, bar none, go read Hiroshime by John Hersey. Its the personal accounts of six seperate people before and after the bombing, and with an update on where they are (I think) 20 years after the bombing. I think I read this book about once a year, its just so compelling and meaningful to read.

Nikki

DrMM

08-08-2005, 10:26 PM

Depressing at first, then almost boring.

Both of them have fairly interesting presentations when you first enter -- the before and after pictures of the cities, and I love Hiroshima's recreation of part of the A-Bomb dome inside the museum that displays the 'protests' the mayor sends whenever there's a nuclear test, and Nagasaki has a fascinating circular design and walk-through entrance. However, after the initial impact is over, they become sadly similar. I don't mean to sound trite but both of them have a huge selection of artifacts that are astoundingly similar. I'm the kind of person who can spend hours in a museum that most people will spend thirty minutes in, but after staring at the 100th piece of brick and glass melted together and the 50th before & after picture of a victim, it got rather boring. I didn't notice this nearly as much in Nagasaki as Hiroshima (perhaps because Nagasaki's museum is smaller), but both of them did tend to have far too many items like that.

I do think as a whole, Nagasaki's museum is better -- but I vastly prefer Hiroshima's Peace Park to Nagaski's. I felt more emotion in Hiroshima's Peace Park than when looking at the A-Bomb dome than I did in either museum.

beatmania

08-09-2005, 04:37 PM

[ QUOTE ]
philip said:
I've always felt that Hiroshima has been slightly sanitised for the Tourist market, also Hiroshima is the more political of the two, in fact the Japanese often describe the rememberances as Shouting Hiroshima and Praying Nagasaki.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. The Hiroshima one is so anti-American its scary.

Kaikou

08-09-2005, 04:49 PM

[ QUOTE ]
bemani said:
I agree. The Hiroshima one is so anti-American its scary.

[/ QUOTE ]

Didn't really notice that, at least not to the extreme your suggesting. I definetely wouldn't call the museum anti-American, just completely against the bomb that was dropped. However even some of the documents cited that they can accept the reasons for the first bomb, but not the second. The museum itself does give the impression of trying to impress upon people that Atomic weapons should be banished from the face of the Earth, but that is what they are going for.

I could be mistaken on my impressions, as I couldn't read everything in the museum. If you have examples of what you saw that was anti-American, I'm interested in hearing them.

ayumu

08-09-2005, 09:58 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Smashingblue said:
[ QUOTE ]
bemani said:
I agree. The Hiroshima one is so anti-American its scary.

[/ QUOTE ]

Didn't really notice that, at least not to the extreme your suggesting.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I agree. I haven't seen Nagasaki to compare, but I thought the Hiroshima museum presented a very unbiased picture of the situation.

I find it really interesting that some people come away with that sort of impression about the museum. My uncle, for example, complained about how biased it was, and how they didn't give enough of America's side (IIRC, he thought they should have mentioned that there was a military base...or was it a military production factory, can't remember now). I went to visit a few months later, and there was a whole section about America's reasons for choosing Hiroshima as a target, including, lo and behold, the exact thing he was complaining they didn't mention.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what people expect..."America dropped a big bomb on us and lots of people died, but we were being bad anyway, so we deserved it"?

Njr Scrawl

08-10-2005, 11:58 AM

Purely from the Hiroshima museum site, I got the impression there was more sadness that mankind had invented & used a weapon like the A-bomb.

If there is any bitterness against Americans, it is the witholding of information about effects of radiation until the mid 1950s, which might have helped treatment & diagnosis sooner & in general the long after-effects of contamination.

As this is Language too, what is the literal meaning of "Pika" (from Barefoot Gen)?

Raja

08-10-2005, 12:53 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Njr Scrawl said:
As this is Language too, what is the literal meaning of "Pika" (from Barefoot Gen)?

[/ QUOTE ]Well, I don't know the context, but "pika" is the written equivalent of a large flash of light...

Just a W.A.G. Your mileage may vary.

Rob

SoopyKun

08-10-2005, 06:27 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Elendil said:
If you want the best book about Hiroshima, bar none, go read Hiroshime by John Hersey. Its the personal accounts of six seperate people before and after the bombing, and with an update on where they are (I think) 20 years after the bombing. I think I read this book about once a year, its just so compelling and meaningful to read.

Nikki

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll be reading this tonight.

badasscat

08-10-2005, 06:51 PM

[ QUOTE ]
ayumu-chan said:
Honestly, I'm not really sure what people expect..."America dropped a big bomb on us and lots of people died, but we were being bad anyway, so we deserved it"?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, Japan has a pretty long and continuing history of denial about their role in WWII. I don't think many people outside of Japan dispute that (just ask the Chinese). Their brand new textbooks still completely omit a lot of what Japan did during WWII. (I'm sure ours omit some of the things we did too; I'm not saying that's right either.)

Most Japanese do not know anything about the planned invasion of Japan and the estimates of casualties on both sides if we'd gone through with it. They don't know about the Potsdam Declaration (which specifically told them they'd face "prompt and utter destruction" if they didn't surrender - you couldn't make it clearer than that, nobody would know what "nuclear attack" meant at that time) or that their government publicly announced days before the Hiroshima bombing that they were ignoring it. They are just not taught these things, and they should be taught. They should be taught these things not to excuse what we did or to make them feel bad about their ancestors' role in the war, but so they understand why we felt like we had no choice. It would only help relations between the two countries today. I mean I've seen Japanese web sites that say we dropped the bomb just so we could "see what happens" if we dropped one on a city! This is ludicrous.

They should also be taught that war is terrible, that nuclear weapons should be banished from the earth, and all the other things they're taught at present. These are all noble ideals. But they do need a real sense of context to events at that time.

Kaikou

08-10-2005, 07:04 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Jeff Williams said:
I mean I've seen Japanese web sites that say we dropped the bomb just so we could "see what happens" if we dropped one on a city! This is ludicrous.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure if your saying this is ludicrous because the site gave this as the only reason or that it's not even a reason for why we dropped the bomb. There is a reason why Hiroshima wasn't firebombed up untill the bomb was dropped. We wanted to see what kind of destruction the bomb would do to a city that wasn't already devastated. So we did want to "see what happens".

I might be misremembering, but when I was at the Hiroshima memorial I remember reading detailed accounts of what happened during the Potsdam Declaration. I also recall reading about what Japan did in China.

Elendil

08-10-2005, 10:34 PM

[ QUOTE ]
SoopyKun said:
[ QUOTE ]
Elendil said:
If you want the best book about Hiroshima, bar none, go read Hiroshima by John Hersey. Its the personal accounts of six seperate people before and after the bombing, and with an update on where they are (I think) 20 years after the bombing. I think I read this book about once a year, its just so compelling and meaningful to read.

Nikki

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll be reading this tonight.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts/reactions to this book once you start/finish reading it.

Nikki

SoopyKun

08-11-2005, 01:38 AM

Elana

08-11-2005, 06:15 AM

[ QUOTE ]
SoopyKun said:
[ QUOTE ]
Elendil said:
[ QUOTE ]
SoopyKun said:
[ QUOTE ]
Elendil said:
If you want the best book about Hiroshima, bar none, go read Hiroshima by John Hersey. Its the personal accounts of six seperate people before and after the bombing, and with an update on where they are (I think) 20 years after the bombing. I think I read this book about once a year, its just so compelling and meaningful to read.

Nikki

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll be reading this tonight.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts/reactions to this book once you start/finish reading it.

Nikki

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, I'll get back to you when I'm done. If I'm ever done. Or if I ever get started. * damn AOD forums*

[/ QUOTE ]

It's a pretty short read, but it's rough. I read it back in high school and I remember having to put it down a lot in order to gather myself and get ready to read the next bit.

SoopyKun

08-12-2005, 10:59 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Elendil said:
[ QUOTE ]
SoopyKun said:
[ QUOTE ]
Elendil said:
If you want the best book about Hiroshima, bar none, go read Hiroshima by John Hersey. Its the personal accounts of six seperate people before and after the bombing, and with an update on where they are (I think) 20 years after the bombing. I think I read this book about once a year, its just so compelling and meaningful to read.

Nikki

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll be reading this tonight.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts/reactions to this book once you start/finish reading it.

Nikki

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, finished this last night. Wow. My heart especially broke over the mother with the 3 kids to support. I can't even imagine how tough that must have been. (I'm a mom, myself) The aftermath was compelling, how one second in time virtually formed the next generations to come, what with all the fear of physical deformities and if babies would be healthy. The one doctor (Fujii, I think) who seemed pretty healthy after everything stabilized, only to fall into a mysterious coma for 11 years, that was disturbing. The actual bombing was interesting to read, too, how everyone saw that same bright yellow light, just when the alarm came that everything was clear. And the fact that the heat from the bomb was so extremely hot that the shadows of buildings and people were actually burned into the ground... Just a very sad part of history.

I know there's the debate about whether or not using the bomb was for the greater good, and I'm not sure which way I lean, but this book was one of the most depressing I've ever read. (Sorry that I haven't provided more names, but I don't have the book at the moment, and it was a very late night.)

fantasydewdrop

08-15-2005, 09:55 AM

I've visited the Hiroshima museum before. If there was anything giving off any anti-American vibes, I was too emotional to notice. One of the people that worked at the museum talked with me for a while and told me some things. One of the things she mentioned was that, yes, there were survivors that hated America because of the bomb (who wouldn't?), but later on some of them were given a free trip to the US to have plastic surgery fix their faces and such, and their experiences caused them to realise that they hated bombs and war, not America....

Very sad place....

Njr Scrawl

08-27-2005, 05:15 PM

This evening, Saturday 27th August, Channel 4 (UK) showed a programme about the 3500+ paintings at the Hiroshima museum, made by surviving witnesses, some of whom were still alive.

Although simple, what is depicted, and the memories that go with them, were terrible. Especially the mother and child who were incinerated together (several different pictures by different people), who one old man was convinced were his mother & sister. At the time he was not brave enough to turn them over & they were never found & identified.

Also the school children who were killed in their hundreds either from the blast or firestorm & collapsed buildings. Another old man had stayed with a girl until she was consumed by flames. She had weakly whispered her name to him, & he was able to trace her from records made back in '45 by the then vice-principal. The school still has some of the concrete troughs, made to hold water for fires, that students climbed & died in to escape being burned alive.

Barefoot Gen is a grim story - a lot of its scenes must have been inspired by the drawings, but this documentary was much worse. I expect the survivors will be glad when they die, as their haunting memories will then torment them no more. /images/graemlins/sad.gif