HIROSHIMA PEACE MEMORIAL PARK
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park contains several memorials to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
including the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park (Heiwa-koen) contains many of the key sites,
with many more located just over the river. These include the
Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Dome.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is reachable by tram line 2 or 6
to Genbaku Domu-mae. While not commonly mentioned,
Shukkeien Garden also
played a key role in the events after the
Hiroshima Bombing and is worth
visiting both for its related history and as one of Japan's best
gardens.
Picture: Foreground - Peace Flame, Midground Peace Pond and Memorial
Cenotaph, Background Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
Memorial Cenotaph
Near the center of
the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is a concrete, saddle-shaped
monument that covers a cenotaph holding the names of all of the
people killed by the bomb. The cenotaph carries the epitaph, "Rest
in Peace, for the error shall not be repeated." Through the monument
you can see the Peace Flame and the A-Bomb Dome. The Memorial
Cenotaph was one of the first memorial monuments built on open field
on August 6, 1952. It is built in Shinto style. The arch shape
represents a shelter for the souls of the victims.
Picture: Foreground: Memorial Cenotaph, Midground Peace Pond and
Peace Flame and Hiroshima
Atomic Bomb Dome.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Cenotaph
Peace Flame
The Peace Flame is
another monument to the victims of the bomb that destroyed
Hiroshima, but it has an additional symbolic purpose. The flame has
burned continuously since it was lit in 1964, and will remain lit
until all nuclear bombs on the planet are destroyed and the planet
is free from the threat of nuclear annihilation.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum documents the bomb and its aftermath, complete with scale models of
"before" and "after", melted children's tricycles and a
recreation of a post-blast Hiroshima street.
Children's Peace Monument
The Children's
Peace Monument (原爆の子の像 Genbaku no Ko no Zō) is a monument for peace
to commemorate Sadako Sasaki and the thousands of child victims of
the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and is located in in Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Park, itself in the city of Hiroshima. Designed by
native artists Kazuo Kikuchi and Kiyoshi Ikebe, the monument was
built using money derived from a fund-raising campaign by Japanese
school children including Sadako's classmates, with the main statue
entitled 'A-bomb Children' being unveiled on the 5th of May, 1958,
or (Children's Day in Japan). Sadako is immortalized at the top of
the statue, where she holds a crane. Thousands of origami cranes
from all over the world are offered around the monument on a daily
basis, with ancient Japanese tradition holding that one who folds a
thousand cranes can have one wish granted. They serve as a sign that
the children who make them and those who visit the statue desire a
world without nuclear war, having been tied to the statue by the
fact that Sadako died from radiation-induced leukemia after folding
over a thousand cranes, wishing for world peace. Beneath the main
structure lies a bronze crane that works as a wind chime when pushed
against a traditional peace bell from which it is suspended, the two
pieces having been donated by Nobel Laureate in Physics Hideki
Yukawa.
Children's Peace Monument
Article based on
Wikipedia article and used under the
GNU Free Documentation License)
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