I was in Hiroshima on a hot summer morning, about a year ago. I took the bullet train from Kyoto, arrived to the station and caught a bus, straight to the main museum in town. Half-way through the exhibit, I couldn’t stop crying, it was just too painful. The most poignant object was a rusted tricycle. It was owned by a little kid who was playing on his yard when the bomb exploded. He was so badly burnt that he died within hours. His dad was so desperate that he decided to bury him along with his toy. Usually, people do not get buried in Japan, they get cremated. So, years later, the father unearthed his son in order to comply with the cremation ceremony and he recovered the toy, which now sits in a plastic box in the Hiroshima bomb museum.
rThere is no other way to describe the bombing of Hiroshima than as an act of terrorism. It was meant to terrify the Japanese, which, by the way, had led an atrocious imperialistic war where they committed unspeakable acts such as the Rape of Nanking in 1937. Not that I want to justify what happened on August 6th, of course. A lot of people argue that the bombing was necessary in order to stop the war, that an invasion was going to be even bloodier. Maybe that is true. Maybe with the bombing the Japanese would “get the message”. That theory would stand by itself if only Hiroshima had been bombed, but Nagasaki? Besides, if the idea was to terrorize the Japanese, why didn’t they drop the bomb in Tokyo Bay? Certainly, the ecological drama plus the radioactive contamination would have been terrible, but I am pretty sure that it would have been persuasive enough. In any case, I am probably wrong since there must have been some justification for this bombing otherwise it would be simply just too horrible, right?
rI learnt terrible things at the Hiroshima museum. I learnt that there were two other planes flying behind the infamous Enola Gay, with scientific measurement tools. The bombing was not only a hideous atrocity, it was also an experiment. I also learnt that the people responsible for the bombing later on offered their “medical help” and flew victims to their country in order to study the effects of radiation on the human bodies. How generous of them.rWar is a bloody mess and I am not naïve enough to separate the world between good and bad guys. There are, however, murderers. Murderers who sit far away, on their desks, so they cannot see the children they will bomb. Assassins who fly so high on their planes so they cannot see the children riding their tricycles. You may agree with me or not, you may kid yourself with very smart excuses and that is fine with me, we can disagree. But you can never disagree with a lonely toy that has lost its owner.
rAfter leaving the museum I decided to see some other tourist points, such as temples or gardens but my travel guide did not mention any. That is because there aren’t any left.
