The Peace Park in Hiroshima had not been high on my list, but after being here, I would encourage anyone who has not been to go. The Peace Museum is a balanced look at what happened on August 6, 1945 (3 days after I turned five) and a poignant cry for banishment of nuclear weapons and war. It is both intellectually and emotionally inspiring.
If only we could collect all those egomaniacal, narcissistic, territorial- and power-hungry world leaders and lock them up inside that museum for a day together, who knows what would happen!
This tricycle survived the blast; the three-year-old boy riding it did not.
[So, Mr. Trump and Sen. Cruz, is this what you mean by “carpet-bombing”?]
The A-bomb dome is a singular icon for peace as are the paper cranes of the young girl who contacted leukemia some years later from the radiation. One thousand origami cranes are to make your wish come true. It did not work for her, nor for so many of the other victims, not only that day, but years later as radiation took its toll. Today estimates of existing nuclear weapons: the US and Russia account for 16,200 with the UK, China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea at an estimated less than 1,700 collectively. Any one country has enough to destroy the planet!
One can (and many have) argued that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to end the devastation of WW II. I’m not going there, but today is a different situation. Bombing, whether by drones or piloted planes, that kills innocent people, only perpetuates violence, makes us all hypocrites, and creates more terrorists.
