Sitting on a bench in Peace Memorial Park, it is almost impossible to believe that the atomic bomb was dropped here. Inside the park's museum, photographs of devastated Hiroshima appear somewhat familiar. I think to, myself, "Yes, I recognize where that would be. Oh, and that too, that would be by the bridge." But when I step out of the museum, the photographs remain inside, and so does the destruction of Hiroshima.
Peace Park is expansive, beautiful, and bright. Trees are changing colors. Greens, browns, yellows, and reds splash the landscape. Pigeons look to be spawning by the thousands at every hour and are outnumbered only by the school children who swarm and gape at me. Toddlers run, followed by mothers and doting grandmothers in their kimonos; the constant shouts of excitement from the school pupils fill the air with the sounds of life. It's no wonder I have difficulty imagining a city that was leveled.
Inside the museum, a horrible tale is told. The charred bodies twist and churn my stomach. That a single bomb could annihilate a city so that I could see it from end to end is beyond imagination. Yet one bomb did so. All war is by definition inhuman. Broken attempts to limit its damage usually become the standards by which we measure our capacity for barbarism. Yet this episode in war seems particularly barbaric. Why? Is it the total lack of discrimination in use of the nuclear weapon? The inhumanity and coldness required in dropping such a weapon on all residents of a city? Is it the legacy of all the side effects, like radiation sickness and genetic defects?
The Motoyasu River is almost dry; the tide is going out with the day. Today has been a strangely peaceful day, filled with memories--not mine by experience, of course, but thoughts of that day, that clear, sunny morning in August of 1945. Behind me, in the park, the peace bell slowly calls out its dull and lonely cry for peace. Its tone is persistent, low, and thick. When sounded, the bell does not clang brashly, nor call attention to itself; rather, it seems to have merely made audible a tone that quietly resides in oneself.
With no sense of the moment but with the sound of years of yearning, it rings out monotonously, enduringly. Before me, a white bird on high, thin legs picks and pokes about in the river's bed. I was wrong just now--the tide, ever so slowly, is coming in.
Joe Lynch was a member of Sojourners Fellowship and worked with the Sojourners Peace Ministry when this article appeared.
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