A Frozen Watch

A watch frozen at the time of the atomic bombing on Hiroshima in 1945.

Time is frozen. I am staring at the broken remains of a watch stopped at exactly 8:15. 63 years ago it stopped working; it is a timestamp—an artifact of history that makes everything real. I don’t know how long it took, or whether or not his family found his body. I don’t know his last thought. All I know is at 8:15 a.m. on the morning of August 6, 1945, the man wearing this watch would never be the same.

I am standing inside the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I am completely alone. There are Japanese and foreigners alike crammed against me, but today there is nothing penetrating my voluntary seclusion. I am in Hiroshima, and I am an American. I wonder painfully if the woman staring at me knows why I am here. I wonder if she hates me.

I came to Hiroshima for my spring break, hoping I might leave…I don’t know. Different. Educated. A better world citizen…but as I stare at this watch I feel doubt. I traveled an hour and a half by the shinkansen bullet train so I could spend one very tiny afternoon recreating who I am.

I have the strong sense that I fell into a tourist trap meant to brainwash American visitors into hating themselves. I am fully aware that everything placed in this museum was done with one purpose in mind: hit my emotions and rip them to shreds.

I maneuver through displays and models, reading everything from the history of Hiroshima before the bombing to the radioactive after effects still today. There is a model of Hiroshima before and after the bombing and I stare mesmerized by the difference. A once busy metropolis disappears in a blanket of soot and rubble in a matter of moments.

A model of Hiroshima before the atomic bombing.

A model of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing.

Down an eerily lit isle is a room full of artifacts from the dead. Lunchboxes scorched in the bomb are filled with the charred remains of a lunch never eaten. A three year old boy’s tricycle and helmet sit behind glass, blistered from the fire. A sandal that belonged to a missing daughter has the shadow of her foot permanently burned into the wood. The body was never found. [singlepic=252,320,240,,right]

Set in imitation rubble they display three mannequins, their clothing tattered, practically falling off of their outstretched, melting arms. After the bomb hit many people “exposed” to the bomb but still alive walked the streets like these zombies. Their flesh hung from their limbs in strings.

I cannot take my eyes off of the mannequin’s distant stares. I feel a sense of their isolation and intense pain and I feel sick. I am more contemptuous than when I entered the museum, and I am entirely depressed by it. People around me are sniffling, holding back tears. I do not cry. All of this is just rhetorical strategy.[singlepic=253,320,240,,left]

Three hours are gone as I stumble out of the museum into the park. There is life all around me. Trees are flourishing. I see people. Children are laughing. Time is moving again, and I can breathe. [singlepic=254,320,240,,right]

Still feeling incredibly bitter and disappointed, I am walking quickly for the railway. I feel like I must be a terrible person. I stared at the ruined lives of thousands of people and remained stoic through all of it. I am nearing the street when I drag to a stop. The Genbaku Dome is glaring down at me.

The Genbaku Dome, also known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, is the only structure still standing since the atomic bombing. I walk carefully up to its fence, my gaze fixed on the skeleton structure. I am standing in the same spot where someone might have died 63 years ago.

The Genbaku Dome--all that remains of Hiroshima before the atomic bombing.

The bitterness and my guilt temporarily subside as I realize how real this building is. I feel as though for the first time all day I am not being beaten with tragedy, but with plain and simple truth. It is a sad and terrible reminder of the past and I can practically hear the screams of the dying from its walls. Like the watch in the museum, it is locked in time.

I finally leave in a state of misery. Outside the park there are walls of skyscrapers, making it impossible for me to look back once I round a corner. Hiroshima is rebuilt and thriving, thrown back into a modern and moving world. Even still, there is an incredible feeling of timelessness following me. I cannot escape it, because I cannot simply wait for time to pass when the minute hand refuses to move. The Genbaku Dome haunts me.

The only thing I can do is pray. God bless us all.