Atomic Bomb Dropping at Hiroshima

August 6th is the day to remember Hiroshima. I have visited Hiroshima twice in my life: first, when I was seventeen, and second, when I was eighteen. The first trip was on an occasion of a school excursion. I have traveled around the areas of Chugoku and Shikoku with 400 students of the same grade. I enjoyed it. At Hiroshima, we stayed at a hotel fronting the Hiroshima Bay. That was a surprisingly luxurious hotel, especially for eighteen-year-old boys. Some brought in various types of alcohols and drank all through the night, and went so wild, although, speaking of myself, I had already known I was quite a type of light drinker and did not drink except one or two drops. It was certainly a nice trip and I had no complaints at all, until when we visited HiroshimaPeace Memorial Museum, whose exhibition deeply struck me. In the museum, chatter and noise of other students annoyed me, since those exhibitions grappled my mind and I really hoped to hear what the objects told me beyond the gap of half a century. I wished I could have come alone and seen each of the objects carefully, in silence.
About one and half a year later, I passed the entrance exam for a University, and soon went for two-week trip to the western side of Japan. I made a trip for refreshing my mind after the harsh pressure of the exam. It was the first time that I traveled alone, and the only time that I rode on a night train. This line became defunct only a year later. I moved to the South end of Kyushu island, enjoyed the famous sand bath, and then moved back little by little, stopping at various spots, both famous and unknown. One day, later in the travel, I stopped at Hiroshima and went into the museum again. This time, the museum was so quiet. I could see the exhibition alone in silence, and was deeply immersed in the world torn by the atomic bomb. There, various objects such as clocks, tables, dishes, and even human bones, were squeezed into unimaginable forms, almost like objects in pictures of cubism. Everything took me off to the outside of everyday life. They shocked me, rather than saddened me. It required strong imagination to think that the bomb had actually dropped to the city which now looks very fine and peaceful. After seeing the museum, I went out to the city and walked for a while without any particular purpose (it was a warm, shiny day). I saw a young person who practiced the saxophone on Ota River. I listened to it, but it was just the normal practice of music. And this normality surprised me in a way. I was struck by the very fact that everything looked normal outside the museum. It seemed to me that only the building of Genbaku Dome preserved the memory of the tragedy.

I don't know how I should engage myself with a tragic event in the history. Today, I saw a video clip broadcasting the memorial at Hiroshima on the web. The camera shows the faces of thousands of people gathering at the memorial park. I imagined that deep feelings of sadness behind each person, and felt a lump rise in my throat. I still don't know what I can do and what I should do.

I saw another news about suicidal attack at Iraq. The number of suicidal attackers have drastically increased after 9/11, and large part of them are children. Feelings of grief entrap me.