Hiroshima

We woke early and drove to the Hakata train station. The high speed trains in Japan are called the Shinkansen. The particular Shinkansen we rode today traveled from Hakata (Fukuoka) to Tokyo.

Tokyo is about 5 hours or more on the train, but we only rode it for an hour to Hiroshima. That hour ride is 9100 yen (about $85) one way - pretty damn expensive. The train ride is surprisingly really smooth and the seats are also comfortable. If only California had a high speed rail like this from San Diego to San Francisco. Think of the cut down on traffic, accidents, gas, and constant freeway widening. Someone who lives in SD could be to work in LA in an hour or so. Forget it, that's a topic for another blog. Back to Hiroshima...

We arrived at the Hiroshima train station and hopped in a 10 minute taxi ride to the Peace Memorial Museum. At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945, this site fell victim to the world's first atomic bombing. I never knew this but the bomb never landed on the ground in Hiroshima, it did in Nagasaki however. The bomb actually detinated about 300 feet above the ground (cant remember the distance). The bomb created a fireball that produced winds over 440 meters per second (985 mph) and a temperature of a 5,000 degrees Celsius. In the words of Tommy Boy, "that's going to leave a mark."

There isn't a bias in the museum blaming the United States for taking the lives of 140,000 people and injuring another 210,000 on this first bombing. There are parts of the exhibit showing the reasoning for the US doing this. The first part of the exhibit shows how the Japanese were fucking with every country and starting a lot of unnecessary wars. There is a letter in the museum from Albert Einstein, who worked on the bomb, where he advises President Truman NOT to use it, but he obviously ignores a man a million times smarter than him. There are collections of clothes, lunchboxes, purses, hair, and wrist and pocket watches (all stopped at exactly 8:15) from the bodies. The museum asked not to take photos, so I didn't. Like I said the museum points no fingers, but it does have a very clear message: Never again!

The United States actually do not have the most nuclear warheads in their possession, very close though. It's Russia who has the most, further proving my recent theory that the Russians are out the get us again. I think they're pissed we've interfered with everything good they've had going on. We may or may not have beat them in the space race to the moon (might be fake). We embarrassed them in hockey at the 1980 Olympics. The How about Afghanistan? We armed Afghanistan so that they could defeat the Russians. Then Afghanistan turned around and declared war on us with our own weapons. Haha. Again, that's a whole other blog. My point: careful of the Russians.

The museum is a excellent place advocating peace in the world and the end of nuclear warhead production. It was said that it would take 75 years to regrown plants, but as you can see in the pictures there's green everywhere.

People outside stand out there promoting peace and giving free hugs to everyone - pretty moving.





The bombed structure is one of only a few buildings in Hiroshima that were left standing after the bombing and is the only one still there today.



I took this picture on the T-bridge, which was the target for the bomb - see the dome to the left and how it close it was to the fireball.

After touring the exhibits, we walked into downtown Hiroshima.

Tomorrow my parents go back home and DJ goes on a trip to Sapporo for a couple games. I'm staying in Fukuoka to wander alone for 3 days. This should be interesting.