Email Message 185:
Bus from Mt. Sanbe to Hiroshima and Miyajima October 10, 2000
Rain continued during night. I had to make a few adjustments to my tent to keep it from leaking, then I slept well through the night. I was offered to room with other women who had rented a spacious cabin, but I had already set up my tent. The rain stopped during the night and it was surprising to see that tent was dryer now than it was when I took it out of my bags last night. The morning sky was slightly cloudy, but it soon burned off and today is sunny.
Breakfast was a prepackaged sandwich made of white bread with the crusts cut off, egg salad, ham and cheese and tuna fish. We had a carton of milk and a carton of juice for our breakfast drinks. Some people supplemented their drinks by buying a hot can of coffee from the vending machine.
We have the same buses and rivers from yesterday. We were asked to ride the same buses as yesterday. We rode through a little more rural area today. I saw more rice fields that had been harvested. Some trees and vines are beginning to change to their fall colors of reds, oranges and yellows.
Another pretty sight we saw were fields of blooming Cosmos flowers. Their flowers are in shades of violet, pinks and whites. They were quite beautiful to see from a distance and close up.
We had one rest stop this morning. The interesting event at the reststop was watching a rider prepare a hot dish of noodles that he got from a vending machine. He opened up the box, opened the package of noodles, spices and condiments, put them in the box, closed the lid, then pulled a string that activated the heating unit in the box. It got so hot he had to put it down on the ground. It was too hot to hold. He just had to wait about 10 minutes, then it was ready to heat. Amazing!
We arrived in Hiroshima around 1pm. We'll stop by the Peace Memorial before being delivered to the ferry that will take us to the island of Miyajima.
HIROSHIMA PEACE MUSEUM
What a heart and soul stirring place to visit! All through out this year of touring around the world I have seen the effects of war. I visited this museum when I visited Japan 28 years ago. I learned that the museum showed two films about it and its effects while I visiting this time. I decided to watch the two films instead of going through the museum.
Hiroshima is a testament to the devastation of an atomic bomb on the citizens of its city. Thousands of people died instantly who were right under ground zero of the bomb. Those who survived the immediate impact didn't understand or recognized what had happened to them. All they knew was that they were very hot. In fact their skin was burned from the heat of the blast. Some had instant 3rd degree burns.
Soon after the impact of the bomb, a fire started that roared through the devastated city and killed many of the surviving victims. No one had an idea to the effects of nuclear radiation on the human body when the bomb was dropped. The medical doctors who survived the bombing didn't know what to do and had also lost a medical facilities and medicine from the blast.
People who showed no signs of injuries from the blast within days and the first month came down with symptoms of excessive vomiting, diarrhea, fever, bruising,etc. The doctors investigating soon discovered that the radiation caused killed the red blood cells and enlarged the white blood cells which are symptoms of the disease leukemia.
Five years after the bomb different disease became apparent as effects of the radiation. Ten and twenty years after the bombing victims were still experiencing new diseases from the effects of the bomb. Besides the loss of human life and structures, the destruction of the bomb included the entire culture of neighborhoods...city records of the people living and working there...lost, school records of the children attending local neighborhood schools...lost. Nothing left of neighborhoods except survivors and their memories. Many bodies could not be claimed by other family members because they, too, had been killed.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have personally experienced the effects of atomic bombs. They have lived with the suffering this type of destruction causes. Immediately after the bombing, they began to speak out about the devastation of atomic bombing and work towards the elimination of atomic bombs and war.