J is for Japan

J is for Japan

I took a bullet train to Hiroshima, Japan. I felt somehow compelled to visit the peace museum there to truly understand the damage and devastation we’d caused. Before the museum, all I’d seen were pictures in history books that I couldn’t quite believe.

Outside the museum, I saw the eternal flame which will remain lit until all nuclear weapons in the world are abolished. I wondered when and if that would ever happened. I doubted it would in my lifetime.
Inside the museum, I poured over a giant map of the world showing which countries have nuclear weapons and how many they have. I learned about the Manhattan Project and was embarrassed, ashamed. I saw concrete walls, preserved to show the shadows of human beings burned into them from the bomb dropping. I heard recordings of the few survivors. I wept.

I do not know if I am better off having visited the museum. I do not know what it was that made me go.  I suppose I have a better understanding of what happened, and this has only created a sense of awe at just what it is humans can do to one another. I remembered being more scared of the future than I’d ever been, realizing what the world is capable of.