From Hiroshima, with horror

If I didn8217;t grasp the entire meaning before coming to Japan, I do now, after a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It is an immensely sad place, yet at the same time uplifting. Sad because it is evidence of man8217;s inhumanity to man; uplifting because it offers proof of how man can break through the great cloud of sorrow and despair to rebuild, rejuvenate, revive.

It was another working morning of August 6, 1945, the war nearing its end, the Americans all but victors. Out of the blue skies over Hiroshima came the Enola Gay. At 8-15 a.m., it dropped a four-tonne bomb called Little Boy packed with 35 kg of uranium. The bomb exploded 580 metres above the city centre, creating a fireball. Within a second, that fireball was 280 m in diameter and temperatures on the ground touched 5,000 degrees centigrade. At the same time, the intense air pressure set off a blast that packed in a force of about 19 tonnes per sq m.

Within a two-kilometre radius, what the heat didn8217;t instantly vaporise8212;flesh, wood, concrete, glass8212;the blast took care of.

In a matter of seconds, most of the city was reduced to rubble. Those who didn8217;t die instantly probably wished they had. The heat burnt the clothes off their skin and then burnt their skin, turning them into living cinders. Others were tossed around like feathers in the wind.

A mother clutching her son, a pregnant woman, children, thousands jumped in and drowned into the city8217;s several rivers. Not too many elderly people; they didn8217;t make it. The hot air cooled in a couple of hours and brought a heavy shower of black rain; water mixed with soot, dust, flesh8230; People drank it, there was nothing else to drink.

And then there was radiation. In extra-large helpings, which could kill you in three hours, three months, three years, 30 years, but kill you it would. Till this day the hibakusha8212;A-bomb survivors8212;are diagnosed with, and die, from, several forms of cancer, the commonest being that of the skin.

Today, Hiroshima is once again a bustling port city. The signs of success are everywhere. But if you look closely, you8217;ll find references to that day. Approaching the city by train, you can see a clock with the time set at 8-15; I was told there are a couple of others in the city.

That doesn8217;t hit you. You head to the museum complex. First stop is the Hiroshima Dome, once the Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, built in 1915 by a Czech architect and admired for its green dome. All that8217;s left is twisted metal and battered concrete. Yet it stands, a kilometre from the A-bomb hypocentre. And the plaque says it will stand forever, to remind people of the consequences of nuclear war.

It still doesn8217;t hit you. You take the obligatory pictures and move on. You see the 8216;8216;phoenix trees8217;8217; that also survived; they said it would be 75 years before anything grew in Hiroshima but the trees defied science. You marvel at Nature8217;s resilience and enter the museum building. It8217;s packed with schoolchildren, some all the way from Tokyo, four hours away. They don8217;t seem to bother about the models of Hiroshima then and now, or of the photographs. Instead, some, spotting my FIFA ID card, quiz me about Beckham, Brazil. The chatter is very loud and you wonder what happened to Japanese manners.

Then the group moves upstairs and suddenly there8217;s silence. You follow them up, wondering what8217;s got them quiet. And then it hits you. It hits you when you see the pictures of the survivors; many of them living corpses, like victims of a plane crash. It hits you when you see the enormous metal Buddha, neatly disembowelled like in some ancient Japanese ritual.

It hits you when you see the survivors8217; drawings of what they saw in those terrible first few hours; you can almost hear the screams of the men and women. It hits you when you see the wax models of victims of fire. But it hits you most when you see the little artefacts donated by families whose loved ones disappeared into thin air.

A girl8217;s kimono made from war-rationed towels, a husband8217;s pocket-watch, a school lunch-box, a tricycle, a young boy8217;s name tag, a mother8217;s lock of hair. A mother8217;s message to her son, scrawled on a roof tile8212;all that was left of their house: 8216;8216;I am alive. Your father is dead. Brothers, sister missing.8217;8217; All that8217;s left of your loved one: a trinket and thin air.

At that point, you feel you can8217;t take it any longer. There8217;s a crushing sorrow in the room; all you want to do is leave, and fast. Your stomach is churning, there8217;s a lump in your throat the size of the new Adidas football. You walk out, half-running, anything to get the depression behind you. As you walk through the garden, and you see the phoenix trees, and then ride into town and see Tiffanys and 7-Eleven and the huge NTT building, you suddenly see the hope. And you feel that weight lifted off you.

The unofficial motto of this museum, possibly of Hiroshima, is Never Forget, Never Again. It8217;s time we spread the word around.