![]() ![]() A European woman leaving the museum had yelled at the students and asked how the displays made them feel. Later, at the train station, my friend and I met three American exchange students who told us their experience at the museum. I left him with his cats and kept exploring. Who knows what exactly the man was thinking but his reaction didn't seem at all surprising. After trying to get his attention a few more times it became clear that the language barrier was not the problem. I asked if I could take a picture, but he didn't respond. When he sat on a stoop and began pouring milk for the cats I bowed slightly and said "Excuse me," in Japanese. As a photographer, to me, the cat-man looked like a great opportunity. ![]() The stories are vividly recorded, not only in words, but in school uniforms shredded from exposure to the bomb, in photos of burn victims and in beams of blasted, melted steel taken from destroyed buildings.Īs a traveler from the U.S., I don't think it's possible to explore the memorial and museum without asking "How do I feel about this?" The other question that seems to linger in mind is "How do they feel about us?"Īs I was leaving the A-bomb Dome, I saw an elderly man walking down the path, followed by three cats. Inside the museum there are many graphic images and stories that are not easy to look at. Mosaics composed of thousands of paper cranes are on display, forming images and words that call for peace. It is part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial grounds, which also includes a forested park, an arched monument and a museum. The dome spoke for itself: a simple, crumbled reminder of what happened. dropped on Hiroshima City at the end of WWII. The first place we visited was Genbaku Domu, or the A-Bomb Dome: the remnants of a building that managed to withstand the atomic bomb which the U.S. Everyone had the quiet and polite public behavior I had become accustomed to. When we arrived at Hiroshima Station after six hours on the Shinkansen, or the bullet train, the people there seemed very similar to those in Tokyo. Recently, I made the trip with my good friend and his mother. Yet, when I consider there are Japanese living today who experienced World War II, it puts a different light on the fact that I can even travel the country freely. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and Atom-Bomb Dome are places I've always wanted to visit, both to see, and in some way, understand what happened there. ![]()
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