Sites and Sounds of Hiroshima

Posted on June 25, 2007 by Maria Cohrs Jonckheere

Recently I took advantage of my newfound military spouse benefits and managed to hop a space available flight to Iwakuni on mainland Japan. I was fortunate to obtain a seat on an eight passenger C-12 plane for the 2 hour flight from Okinawa to Iwakuni, located on Honshu Island, the largest of Japan's four main islands. While Iwakuni may not ring a bell for some of you, it is less than a 40 minute train ride to Hiroshima, one of the many historical “must see” cities in Japan. Though Iwakuni has a few wonderful sites – including the Kintai Bridge, first built by Hiroyoshi Kikawa (third feudal lord of the Kikawa clan) in 1673 - and is near to a number of other historical areas, many of us are all too familiar from history what Hiroshima has endured from its beginning in 1589. However, much has changed and today it is a vibrant city and well known to both residents and tourists.

With a population of approximately 1.5 million, Hiroshima has come a long way, offering a unique mixture of history and modern architecture. Here you will find not only the Peace Memorial Park and all of its marvels, but also the Hiroshima castle, a number of museums, and the Fudoin and Mitaki temples. Within the Peace Prayer Park, lies the Cenotaph engraved for A-bomb victims, the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Children’s Peace Monument – also known as the “Tower of a Thousand Cranes”. This monument was built in honor of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who was exposed to the bombing at age two, contracted leukemia ten years later and died. Adhering to an old Japanese legend which stated that anyone who folded a thousand paper cranes would be granted a wish, Sadako completed over 1000 before she eventually succumbed to the disease in 1955. Her memory lives on as today people all over the world send paper cranes to Sadako's monument in Hiroshima.

At the end of my stay in Hiroshima, I was befriended by a kind Japanese woman who introduced herself in a café where both of us had ventured at the end of a long day. We talked about her home of Hiroshima and our very different lives which we discovered ran parallel when we discussed our previous traveling adventures in Europe. This was yet again one of the many examples of Japanese kindness and hospitality which I have experienced – and to see it in Hiroshima further exemplifies the peaceful qualities which I believe many of the locals possess.

My trip to Hiroshima was perfect having included culture, history and time spent with a lovely Japanese woman who welcomed me to her home city. And the ride home in the back of a C-130 amongst U.S. Marines was all the more interesting to wrap up my adventure.