Hiroshima: The City of Peace

Hiroshima today with reminders
of the past (the A-Bomb Dome)

After four days in the Tokyo area our group boarded a train for the city of Hiroshima in western Honshu.  As the train made its four hour journey west, I had time to reflect on what had happened in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.  Being a garrison town during World War II, the city was selected by President Truman as the site for the use of the world's first Atomic Bomb.  After the war Hiroshima became and still is a powerful messenger of the effects of the atomic bomb and a promoter of a world without nuclear weapons.  The city of Hiroshima has been completed rebuilt and today is a modern city, but it still preserves in its peace park and museum (ground zero of the Atomic Bomb) the effects of that day and the memorials to its victims.  I was coming to this city with gifts of peace from my students in the shape of paper cranes-1,000 to be exact that I was prepared to leave at the Children's Memorial in the Peace Park.

My Tour Guides and I in Front of
Sadako Statue

When our NCTA group arrived we were taken to our Hotel where we were greeted by nearly a hundred ninth-grade students from a nearby Middle School holding placards with our names on them.  They were to serve as our tour guides for the afternoon.  I was introduced to my five guides and together we made our way to a nearby restaurant for lunch.  On the menu today was a Japanese favorite that originated in Hiroshima, okonomiyaki, which is a Japanese pancake cooked on a griddle.  Bean sprouts, sliced cabbage, meat, eggs, and noodles are added to  the thin pancake and then plenty of sweet okonomi sauce is added atop.  We all loved it!  There was too much for me to eat all of it but my growing table mates helped me out in that area!  After lunch we began our tour of the peace park.  The students took turns describing various memorials in the park.  Words cannot describe the emotions felt as I was guided through this site by these young people.  Together we made vows of peace for a future without nuclear weapons.  As the teachers and students gathered back together they sang for us a song of peace and we thanked them for their hard work preparing for this day and the great job they did speaking English and giving us an afternoon that would stay with us for many years to come. 

Mr. Matsushima being presented a gift
by NCTA tour leader Mimi Stephens

After a very moving afternoon, we moved into the Peace Museum for a presentation by a retired teacher and Hibakusha, Atomic-Bomb survivor, Mr. Keijiro Matsushima.  He has spent most of his lifetime sharing his story of that terrible day in the hopes that there will never be another use of a nuclear weapon on the earth again.  It was a true honor to hear his story.  One that I will share with my students in the upcoming school year.  

Ms. Avery hanging The 1,000 paper cranes

                                                            Our group spent two days and nights in Hiroshima.  The second day my friend Susan and I toured the Peace Park and placed our students 1,000 Origami Paper Cranes at the Sadako Statue, Children's Memorial.  Sadako Sasaki was a Japanese girl who was two years old when the bomb was dropped.  She and her family survived that day, but when Sadako was 12 years old she developed leukemia and the doctors told her she had at most a year to live.  Her best friend, Chizuko Hamamoto, told her about the act of making 1,000 paper cranes as a wish for health and long life.  Sadako set about making the 1,000 paper cranes in the hoped that she would be cured of the disease.  Sadly, she died having only made 644 cranes.  A popular story, that comes from the book, Sadako and The Thousand Paper Cranes, recounts that her friends finished making the 1,000 cranes and buried them all with her.  Ever since then, people from all over the world come to Hiroshima as well as Nagasaki (site of the 2nd Atomic Bomb) and lay paper cranes at the Children's Memorial and other memorials in the Peace Park as a wish for peace for all mankind.  Susan and I were deeply honored to be able to bring our cranes so far and place them at this memorial.    Our students message of peace was made known.  

Saying a prayer at
The Atomic Bomb Memorial,
Hiroshima Peace Park.

As we made our way north again towards Kyoto, I took with me powerful images and messages to share with my students on the devastating effects of war and the powerful message of peace.