I felt strange before I even arrived.
I wanted to visit Hiroshima. Also, at the same time, I didn’t. But I felt I should. My autism means I feel everything deeply and I wasn’t sure what to expect and was worried it would be overwhelming. And I felt that I should be overwhelmed.
On the drive into the city, seeing Hiroshima on the road signs was a bit surreal. The name carries too much weight to be all over the road signage. It shouldn’t sit there beside apartments, offices, shops, and people going about their day.
But of course it does. And I could feel the anticipation and, if I am honest, dread, building up as I got closer to the Peace Memorial Park.
Part of me expected the whole city of Hiroshima to be a museum. Stopped in time. The devastation so vast, and the events there so profound, that some irrational part of me couldn’t understand how ordinary life could could have continued.
I fluffed the parking; making people stare at the incompetent driver working hard to get into a perfectly normal and accessible parking space, as I tried, and failed, to concentrate on the car; my mind entirely on what I was expecting to experience.
I saw the Flame of Peace first.
It was the severity of the geometry that called to me. The grey concrete, the strong lines, the stillness around it. And then the flame itself, bright and moving in the middle of the austere lines.
The vertical lines of the conference centre reflected in the still, grey, water. The top of the cenotaph containing the flame.
The boulevards around it were packed with people, but the area around the base of the flame was empty. A pool of solitude.
I was mesmerised by the flame. So small. Dwarfed by the concrete structure housing it. But so alive and bright. A beautiful focal point.
The Peace Memorial Park was full of people, large tour groups, groups of people there for remembrance. To learn. To experience. Sombre around the memorials, animated and noisy around the edges.
Then I found the Memorial Hall. Almost empty.
I hadn’t expected that. After the bustle of the park outside the quiet felt solid.
Inside, there is a 360-degree image of Hiroshima after the bombing etched into the walls. Beneath that are thousands of tiles. Over one hundred and forty thousand of them. Each representing a life lost. Joined with the names of the 226 towns that existed at the time of the bombing.
Seeing the tiles, and understanding what each one was… I can’t find the words. The unfathomable made fathomable. The scale of it, laid out cleanly and without fuss. It undid me.
Coming out of the Memorial Hall into the autumn sunshine was jarring. Inside everything had been quiet and still. Outside, the city was bright and busy and full of people chatting and looking for coffee.
Now I wasn’t really walking. I was drifting in a daze. Not taking in anything of the busy and jostling people. Desperate to get away from the crowds. To sit quietly and absorb the weight of the experience.
Then I spotted him.
A Japanese man on a busy corner, wearing a T-shirt that said Free Hugs. He kept pointing at the ‘free hugs’ and leaping about energetically, as waves of tourists parted around him, pretending very hard that they couldn’t see him.
I made straight for him. We looked at each other, smiling, and stepped into a hug that seemed to last a very long time.
We smiled at each other again as we stepped back, and I walked on, absorbed back into the flow of people. Made a bit lighter by that very human (and very needed), moment of comfort and connection.
In search for solitude, I walked past a group of children that were eating their lunch on the river bank opposite the Atomic Bomb (Genbaku) Dome.
They were obviously there on a school trip. White hats, school bags, packed lunches, teachers keeping everything organised. After the stillness of the Memorial Hall, and the noisy bustle of the park, their colourful orderliness was a welcome relief.
Just the ordinary, right there. Children eating lunch across from a devastated building.
I really can’t explain why that spoke to me the way it did. I sat on a park bench next to them, soothed by small people’s lunch drama.
When I reached the Atomic Bomb Dome, the red bricks of the building skeleton were lit up in the sunshine. But, for me, there was still a cloak of sadness that the sunshine couldn’t get through. Though maybe that was my emotion coming through. The twisted metal, stairs that don’t go anywhere, the empty windows, the light catching the metal skeleton.
By now I was exhausted and emotionally empty. The solid quiet, the noisy crowds, the weight of the history, the hug, the children, the Dome, the flame. I was completely done in.
The last thing I saw before leaving were the roses in the garden of remembrance next to the shattered Genbaku Dome.
Yellow petals. Starting to open. Soft, delicate and beautiful.
A fitting end to an emotional but beautiful day.