On August 6 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. I am writing these words less than a mile away from the center of the blast. It hard for me to believe that this bustling is standing on the site of a freaking nuclear blast. This morning we all went to the Memorial museum and it was an intense experience. The history books in the US don't show you the actual carnage. In fact, I thought that the whole city was pretty much vaporized and that the people that were killed didn't know what hit them. While that might be true for some of the victims. That wasn't the case at all for a lot of people. The victims of the bomb died slow, agonizing deaths. A lot of "survivors" died of cancer years later. This was hard to see. I felt...sad is not the word, it's something hard to describe. For me, this brought back memories of things I rather not think about. I never liked to see civilians getting hurt in Iraq and it was hard to see pictures of children burnt by the bomb.
I like that Japan has embraced the Peace mentality and it's dedicated to nuclear disarmament. I like their statement on their museum basically saying that they will face the truth of their history and learn from it so that they don't make the same mistakes again.
I'm glad I was able to come here. I am very impressed with the honesty in which Japan chooses to remember this chapter in history.
JV
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