With three companions I travelled to Japan in May 2018. One of the reasons for this trip was to finally visit Hiroshima, to be present and pay my respects at the site of one of the principal atrocities of the 20th century.
This episode of Sonic Sketchbooks comprises excerpts from recordings I made over the three days we spent staying on the rural outskirts of the city, journeying to visit Hiroshima’s Museum of Contemporary Art, A-Bomb Museum, Peace Park and the skeletal Genbaku Dome remains that, along with the mushroom cloud, have become the enduring symbols of that awful moment at 8:15am on the 6th of August 1945 when over 70,000 Japanese people were instantly extinguished from life on earth and as many again were terribly wounded and traumatised.
Of course, 70 years on from that moment, the Hiroshima we visited was like any other well-known Japanese city - bustling, teeming with tourists, brimming with a peculiar mixture of greenery and concrete, peppered with temples and shrines, little restaurants and bars, department stores, the unique scents and sounds of Japanese daily life in the air. It’s difficult to access any sense of that time-distant horror - which is why the museum, the peace park and the memorial exist - to enshrine and ensure remembrance. Everywhere around the city are plaques and information panels with bi-lingual texts and archival photos - many taken by US Army personnel - explaining the narratives of places transformed by war and post-war change.
A surprising encounter was with trees that survived the bomb blast and live on to shade inner city streets today. Each is considered a living treasure - a green legacy - known as the Hibakujumoku - one of which is an eastern Australian gum tree - Eucalyptus melliodora or yellowbox - that survived in the grounds of the completely destroyed 16th century Hiroshima Castle.
This sound wander begins and ends with birdcall around the air-b&b we stayed in, a farm house surrounded by rice paddies about to be planted out. Our hosts were a lively elderly couple who greeted us with hibachi grill, beer and sake. Just before leaving two days later Kazuhiro-san drove us up to his local shinto shrine atop the adjacent forested hill, to instruct us in the etiquette of shrine visiting.
We took a local train into Hiroshima - you’ll hear a Shinkansen bullet train shoot through the station at well in excess of 200km per hour - it really is blink and you miss it! - and spent the day walking from site to site contemplating the dreadful recurrent reality of destructive warfare, the human ability for renewal, and the enduring hope and work for peace despite and because of the persistent pernicious presence of military madness.
The bell you will hear is the Peace Bell funded by a survivor’s group and forged in 1964. Installed in a small domed concrete structure within the Peace Park it can be sounded by anyone to signal their desire for peace. A moat surrounding the structure is planted with the progeny of 2000 year old lotus seeds germinated by Japanese scientist Professor Ichiro Oga. They reference that survivors wrapped their savagely blistered burnt bodies with lotus leaves in attempt to alleviate their pain.
