Skip to main content

Hiroshima - 1

On Tuesday, August 29, Hiroshima was our destination. 

I'd just seen the movie "Oppenheimer" and was glad I saw it before visiting the location of the first angry atomic bomb blast. The politics of the development and eventual decision to use the bomb are probably the most serious that I have ever contemplated. 

Visiting Hiroshima was sobering. The city and its memorials showed me the other side, a not-well known side in the U.S., of this war story. In late July, I visited Munich, Germany, another target of Allied bombing in World War II. Both cities have been completely rebuilt. But, the reconstruction (which had to be done) covers over the massive destruction and loss of life. 

Reflecting on both visits, I became aware that these were once the countries considered our enemies. We bombed the crap out of them. Today, we are friends. 

In both cases, I didn't sense or experience resentment from my hosts. Looking on the rebuilt cities and countries, I felt bad about the extent of destruction that the Allies (my side) inflicted on them. I believe that World War II had to be fought and I'm glad that the Allies won. I grew up thinking we were right, fighting the just cause. These visits reminded me that the cost was enormous and in the U.S. while we lost many in battle and in battle preparation, we escaped the devastation. 

Munich: the building facades are reconstructed to look like they did before World War II. Many buildings have modern sub-structures. The darker structure across the street is the facade of a shopping mall.

The primary focus of our Hiroshima visit was the Peace Memorial Park, a green space dedicated to peace. The park land was under the bomb explosion.

The Genbaku Dome - photo taken from the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan. 

Amazingly enough part of one structure survived the blast, the Genbaku Dome. The structure "is the skeletal form of the surviving remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotional Hall (constructed in 1914)", according to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. 

Standing at the fence surrounding the Genbaku Dome.

Across the river is the bulk of Peace Memorial Park. That contains the Children's Memorial and the Bell of Peace. 

Part of the Children's Memorial

The bell of Peace. I rang the bell.

It also contains the Atomic Bomb Memorial Burial Mound. I didn't want to shoot or share a photo of that. Looking at the mound brought home how many lives were lost in the blast. Tens of thousands died instantly and tens of thousands more died from the after effects. This was the place at which we aimed the bomb. None of this is to discount the similar devastation wreaked upon Nagasaki a few days later.

I'll leave the story about my first ride on the Shinkansen for part two of this post. It doesn’t seem to be on topic here.

                                                                                  # # #

Labels:

Comments

  1. Ken KorenSeptember 15, 2023 at 9:15 AM

    Sobering. 78 years later and still impactful.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adventures in T-Trak: Laying track

Laying track on my new T-Trak module was not a complicated job. Still, the process hit a minor snag, providing a learning experience. My friend, Steven Cox is the owner of precisionmodelrailroad.com/ . His new firm builds laser-cut model railroad benchwork parts. The company offers helix parts, straight benchwork sections and T-Trak modules. The T-Trak modules are an early product used to test the concept. T-Trak is a modular system that uses Kato N-scale Unitrack. The idea is that if you have limited space its possible to get modeling and participate in the hobby. The T-Trak concept is young, born in 2000. It has international interest. In part, that’s due to the partnership between the T-Trak standards group and Kato. Steven sent me a pre-production T-Trak kit. It assembled into a 12-inch by 12-inch box. I’m not going to post a blog about building that kit because the current kit design is different. It took me a couple of hours to build the module. Most of the time was waiting for
Post a Comment
Read more

Adventures in T-trak: Planning scenery for an urban module - Draft 1

Tokyo. That's the scenic subject of my T-trak module supplied by https://www.precisionmodelrailroad.com/ . It will be a representation, not a prototypical recreation. The scene needs to cover a 12-inch by 12-inch space. Actually, the street scene needs to fit into a smaller space. The tracks consume a three-inches by 12-inches. That leaves 108 square inches. Is this enough space for a plausible street scene? Of course. People are doing far more in less space.  My idea wa s to build a city street and buildings parallel the tracks. A cross street would dead end into the main road. At the intersection, we’d see an entrance to the Tokyo Metro. The intersection would have a traffic light. Initially I thought the cross street could meet at a 90-degree angle to the main street. The concern is giving the viewer a straight view to the backdrop. That could decrease the scene's plausibility. An alternative is that the cross street connects at a diagonal. Another possibility, the cross str
Post a Comment
Read more

Catching up -- I may not have been very social. I have been busy, though.

I'll catch you up, since my last post. I've been buried with a variety of issues.  I'm back from Japan. Most of those posts (and there are more to come) were published on an after-the-fact basis.  In December 2023 (just before Christmas), I developed a left inguinal hernia. Surgery fixed that on March 22, 2024. Just when it seemed that my health life should calm down, last week, I caught Covid. I'm still recovering from both. This spring, I sent myself back to college. I'm taking an architectural rendering class (using computers) and a Japanese tools and woodworking class. The architecture class is teaching me how to use Sketchup.  I'll use the skills from the rendering class to start designing custom structures for the B&OCT layout and Takadanobaba in Alameda.   I have historical pictures of four interlocking towers I want to represent on the B&OCT layout (Western Ave., Ash St. Jct., 49th St. and 75th St.)  Pictures of 75th St and Ash St. (If you zoom i
Post a Comment
Read more