Tuesday (Day 3) found us traveling from Osaka to Hiroshima via Shinkansen (bullet train). What a way to travel! Smooth. Quiet. And the acceleration and deceleration were almost imperceptible. The train has a top speed of around 280 km/hr (150 mph). Shinkansen are known for punctuality. They leave on the second of the scheduled departure time. A ten sec late departure must be reported.

Our visit to Hiroshima was sobering. We visited Peace Memorial Park, the site of the world’s first atomic bomb blast. Included in the park are the iconic A-bomb dome (the former Industrial Promotion Hall), the Peace Memorial Museum, the Children’s Peace Memorial and the curved Centograph that contains the names of 294,000 people that perished instantly or eventually. The Children’s Peace Memorial depicts a young girl holding a paper crane. She believed if she made a 1000 paper cranes she would be healed of radiation sickness. She eventually died. The museum was an amazing depiction of the bombing and the horrors that day brought. We listened to an 87 year woman survivor describe her experience with the bombing. She was 12 at the time. She had to witness the hundreds of “living dead” that roamed the streets seeking help. A sobering experience for all in our group.

The force of the bomb was estimated at 15 kilotons of TNT. The fireball was 400 m in diameter and temperatures in the fireball reached 6000 deg C vaporizing everything within it. Everything within a mile radius of the blast was totally destroyed except for a few reinforced concrete structures like the dome. Today’s thermonuclear bombs are 3000 times more powerful. Our visit to Hiroshima was emotionally powerful . The thousands of people vaporized. The hundreds of thousands that eventually lost their lives. Modern thermonuclear weapons have over 3000 times as much power. Survivable? Maybe except for the numbers. The US has 1600 warheads deployed with 2050 in reserve. Russia has 1600 warheads deployed with 2730 in reserve. The remaining nations in the “nuclear club” have a few hundred more. The global policy of mutually assured destruction is a reality. With so many egotistical leaders around the World rattling their sabers, one can on imagine and fear the outcome if only one of them is not “stable”. Our children and their children rely on responsible leadership no matter where they live.THINK ABOUT THAT!!! Is humanity headed in the right direction?

From Hiroshima we were bused down to Miyajima Island, which we reached with a 15 min ferry ride from the mainland. A World Heritage Site, Miyajima Island contains Itsuhushima Shrine, a Shinto shrine first built in 593 and remodeled in 1168. It honored three goddesses that were deities of the sea in order to protect mariners that brought goods from China and Korea to Japan. Built on a tidal flat, the shrine is often compared to St Michel in France, which is rhythmically surrounded by tidal flow. About 100 m in front of the shrine is the large, red O-Tori Gate, which unfortunately was covered for renovation.

We then took the Shinkansen to Kyoto for a two night stay.