Hiroshima-A City of Hope

by Francine Gardner (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Japan

I remember not knowing what to expect as I stepped onto the platform at Hiroshima station. My dear friend Masayo, a Tokyo native whom I had met in London three years before, had taken the trouble of organising and booking the train journey there for my benefit. I had been overwhelmed with gratitude at her offer for me to stay at her family home. She personified a trait I was to see time and again since my bewildered arrival at Tokyo Narita airport-generosity. I had been told many things by people prior to my journey. Jokes that I would be the tallest person there, that it would be an immense culture shock, that the sushi was incomparable to anything I’ve tasted before. They were right about the food. Before my arrival in Tokyo, the idea of sushi had never appealed to me. A visit to the Tsukiji fish market soon changed all that. Afraid to offend anybody, I tried everything they put in front of me. And I didn’t regret it. A five-course meal of different sushi dishes prepared in front of me with the fresh fish straight off the market and I was hooked. Never had I tasted fish so tender, so fragrant and succulent. It is the reason I now eat sushi today, though the UK versions pale in comparison. They were wrong about the height jokes. At five feet tall, I was still seen as diminutive. As to the culture shock, I didn't find it any more bewildering than anywhere else I had travelled that I was new to. Certainly, the metro system was confusing at first glance, and I must have stood for the best part of half an hour just staring at the spaghetti of different trainlines on the station map, unable to comprehend how I was going to find my destination. Luckily, I was spotted by a gentleman who identified himself, complete with name tag and photo as a tour guide, who said he was happy to help me find my way, his English perfect, of course. This was to be a common occurrence throughout my stay in Japan. Whether they spoke English or not, total strangers offered their assistance, wanting nothing in return for it. Hiroshima was a city I had always wanted to see. Excited as I was, I recall feeling some trepidation as I stepped onto that platform from the bullet train we had caught from Kyoto. This was a place I had learned about in school, had nightmares about, associated only with those terrible pictures from the fallout in 1945. The reason the word ‘nuclear bomb’ strikes so much terror into the hearts and minds of people today. Just recalling those photographs still makes me shudder, as perhaps it always should. As I mentioned before, I was not sure what I expected. Part of me expected some sort of a ruin, a wasteland of a city, a sad and desolate place. What I found was a city alive, optimistic, built up and beautiful. Had I never known the disaster that had occurred there I would think this was like any other city, with its bustling trams, its museums, castles and smiling faces. The ruin itself, the only building left standing after the bomb detonated, the epicentre of the disaster, was basked in low afternoon sunlight. Stray cats had made the shell their home, which gave a strange softness to the haunted building. Doubly haunting was its perfect reflection in the crystal-clear river beneath it, the river that had been littered and polluted all those years ago with the bodies of its tragic citizens. In the Peace Memorial Park, I stared contemplatively at the Flame of Peace, burning since 1964, continuing to burn until all nuclear weapons are abolished worldwide. We are still a long way from such progress. But what I got from this achingly sad and beautiful place is the feeling of hope. That life is precious and can be beautiful, even in the face of such atrocity. The city seemed to reflect that. It is not a city marred by its past, rather strengthened by it. It is living proof that we can always move forward. And hope.