On my first day in Japan, the cold ran through the streets with sharp feline teeth. But, the next morning, without anyone having told me, spring arrived. Suddenly. Hat, scarf, gloves, and even the jacket, were extra. A few days later, in the middle of the day, he was walking around in his shirt sleeves among the crowd that had taken over the parks of Kyoto.
Because they had announced it on TV. On the news they had followed its progression, which had started in the south, in Okinawa, had reached the island of Kyushu, advanced from city to city, spreading out in the streets, painting the sidewalks. A car stopped at a corner. The driver got out. A motorist also stopped. And, just like the pedestrians did, they took out their cell phones to take some photos of the scrawny branches of a small tree, where a cluster of pink flowers stood out. The sakura! Cherry blossoms!
At night I went to Maruyama Park. The trees were illuminated. The succulent aromas of the food stalls floated through the air and the crowds, in their hundreds, or thousands, crowded the entrances.
I fled south. A shinkasen, a bullet train, dropped me off in Hiroshima. He had a pending date with human infamy. The trace of him is still evident in the Genbaku Dome. Of the building designed by the Czech Jan Letzel, inaugurated in 1915 for the Commercial Exhibition of the Hiroshima Prefecture, some walls and the twisted iron structure of the dome that crowns it remain today. Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped by the American bomber Enola Gay, exploded at one hundred and fifty meters, just over Shima Hospital. Within a radius of two kilometers the city was devastated. Sixteen kilometers away, glass exploded. The detonation could be heard sixty kilometers away. The bomb wiped out a third of Hiroshima's inhabitants. And, to the seventy thousand initial victims, seventy thousand more would be added, injured by radiation and the ominous cloud that followed the explosion.
The dome appears today as a Peace Memorial. Opposite, on the other bank of the Motoyasu River that passes at its feet, the Peace Park extends. There the flame burns that will remain lit until the nuclear threat leaves the Earth and monuments are raised in memory of the victims, among whom there were thousands of Koreans who at that time were doing forced labor in the city. The children have their own monument. In many cases the consequences appeared years later. For Sadako Sasaki, who was two years old when the bomb was dropped, the first symptoms appeared when she was eleven. She was diagnosed with leukemia. At the hospital, a roommate of hers told her that when she folded a thousand origami cranes, her wish was granted. She doubled the thousand, and more, but she died months before her thirteenth birthday. Become a symbol of peace, the cranes come from all over the world in thousands and surround the children's monument.
The before, during and after the bomb in the city, with numerous breathtaking examples, is exhibited right there, in the Peace Memorial Museum. I leave with my heart in my mouth. The cherry blossom trees that flank the river seem ready to soften the blow. Under its branches, they have stretched blue tarps. They are ready to welcome co-workers, families, friends, who gather to celebrate a picnic and toast life.
