One time. I can only say it once.
It seems that Hiroshima is not done teaching us lessons yet, because look what happened.
Welcome back to another beautiful, if not a bit chilly, day in Japan.
Today's video is a little bit different than our normal videos.
Usually we wake up and we are super excited to be where we are.
Today, we've got some mixed feelings.
We are in a city famous around the world, but maybe not for the right reasons.
If you haven't guessed it already, today we are visiting Hiroshima.
We don't know what to expect.
We haven't watched a lot of YouTube videos about Hiroshima or anything like that.
We're going to go see the Peace Memorial Museum with about, I don't know, 800 or 1,000 Japanese
high school students, to get some perspective.
It's often said that history is defined by the victor, and this Museum
was an exception to that.
The museum told the story of the locals here in Hiroshima.
What life was like before the A-bomb was dropped, what it was like immediately after, and in
the decades following, and how that amount of destruction was unleashed, along with untold
amounts of human suffering.
Although Hiroshima has since rebuilt, it's a thriving city with over a million residents,
it even affects the residents of Hiroshima today, as we heard from their stories.
How did the museum make me feel, you might ask.
It was challenging.
There was a section of the museum that was extremely graphic.
We've spared you from that.
People really suffered.
It was - it was awful.
I'm trying to think of the words to describe what we just experienced.
The museum does a really good job of taking you through what life was like in Hiroshima
before a bomb leveled it, and then showing you the extremely destructive aftermath, and
I find that words like sobering and emotional don't really do it justice, when you're going
through it and you're learning about what happened right here, where we're literally
standing.
I'm just going to cry my way through it.
I told Bill I can only say this once, so we're just going to cry our way through it together.
At the beginning of the museum, they had this display that sort of showed a countdown,
and as we showed at the beginning, we went in with all these kids.
Most of them were high school age; some of them were a bit younger.
I happen to be standing next to some of the younger kids.
They were maybe my niece's age, maybe 11ish, and they showed the bomb sort of coming down
out of the sky, and then it hit Hiroshima, and all this is on the display in front of us.
There were these two boys standing next to me, again 10 to 12 years old, and the bomb
sort of hit and then the whole display just sort of lights up.
The boy next to me visibly was surprised, and then he
places an arm around his friend,
as though to comfort his friend, but I think it was for himself.
That really made me wonder, was a grandparent, an aunt, or an uncle, a great grandparent
- what stories had the boy been told, so that he was so visibly, like, shaken - that he
felt like he had to comfort whomever he was there with.
Obviously we weren't filming.
We try not to capture kids like that, but clearly it affected me.
I can't even talk about it, without being a mess myself.
Clearly now, generations later, it's still being felt by the kids who come here on field trips
to learn about what their families went through at the time.
Even though they probably were even told about it directly from parents and relatives, to
see a kid affected like that while going through the museum, sort of set the tone for me for
the rest of the museum - and that was at the beginning!
I knew I wouldn't be able to talk about this.
It's okay.
One time.
I can only say it once.
When we said we weren't excited about today - like, we knew that this would be a hard
day. Coming from America and visiting a site like this, where our country caused this destruction.
We aren't judge and jury about what happened here.
It's not our intent to present this as being right or wrong.
There are so many perspectives, politically, on whether this was needed, whether it was
not needed, but the effects for the people who lived through this, live on today.
That's what we are here to pay witness to, and to respect the families that went through this.
We pulled ourselves together over lunch, which was quite good, and now we're at the Children's
Peace Memorial.
This Memorial actually has really unique history.
A young girl, at the age of two, was exposed to radiation in Hiroshima when the bomb went
off, and later she developed leukemia and other diseases. While she was
trying to recuperate and become better, she created origami cranes in the hospital.
It is believed in Japan, that if you are able to create 1,000 origami cranes out of paper,
that your wish will be granted.
She wished for nothing more than good health.
Unfortunately, her wish did not come true and she passed away at the tender age of 12.
Her classmates were so moved by her generous, open spirit in her life, that they wanted
to create a memorial to all the children who had passed away at Hiroshima.
They started collecting money locally and that expanded into a worldwide movement, and
the children received over 3,000 donations from Japan schools, and from around the world.
They used that money to build the memorial that you can see behind me.
We came here to learn about what happened to the city and to the people.
Well, it turns out that about 10% of the victims were actually Korean, and so about 20,000
Koreans died here.
Behind me is the monument to them.
As we're walking around this park, we can see all sorts of
monuments that are scattered about.
It's a really nice park; very moving monuments.
Most of them have good English descriptions, some don't, but we're mostly able to follow.
There is definitely some rain coming in, but I guess that sort of feels
fitting for today, doesn't it.
Behind me is directly below where it's believed that the bomb was detonated, about 600 meters
above where I'm standing.
It's also become the main symbol of the city, and the city has decided to keep it in its
current state, and maintain it this way in order to keep it as a monument, for us to
recognize what happened on that fateful day.
We're across the street here from the A-bomb dome, just maybe, I don't know, 200 feet away.
The bomb blasted directly above this neighborhood.
I'm standing here next to Jizo, which is a garden deity statue.
What's interesting about it, is it survived - but there's this shadow around the bottom
of the statue, where this base was not harmed by the atomic blast.
As you move away from the statue, it smooths out, where this was heated to 4,000 degrees
for a tenth of a second.
The day has given us rain, but it's also given us a rainbow right there.
Hiroshima is not done teaching us lessons yet, because look what happened.
Yes, that is a stunning, stunning rainbow over the Dome.
Just beautiful.
I guess Hiroshima is trying to send us a message - a message of hope, and peace, and rainbows.
I'm listening.
Yeah, it's still raining out a little bit.
That rainbow was a beautiful, beautiful main rainbow, with a second one behind it, that
probably wasn't very visible.
Everybody stopped what they were doing so they could stop and witness this rainbow,
which is absolutely beautiful.
I ran to the other side of the bridge so I could take some photos of it, and I stole
the camera from Bill.
Absolutely beautiful. What a message.
Even though we haven't watched any videos on YouTube about Hiroshima, we have searched
for them.
Almost all of them are, top five things to do in Hiroshima, and things to do in the area.
We actually disagree with that.
There's one reason, and one reason only, you should come to Hiroshima, and that's to visit
this site and pay witness to those who passed away on that sad day in 1945, and the legacy
that the generations that followed have had to bare.
There are other things to do in this area, but come to Hiroshima for Hiroshima.