Where in the World is Marta Senn-Diego? Part Five. "No more Nagasaki! No more war!"

I'm not 100% up to writing today, considering I finally made my trip to the Atomic Bomb Museum and Memorial Hall and park. I certainly wasn't expecting something dull and banal, but there was no way I could have prepared myself for how the museum would make me feel.

A good comparison for most Americans who have been to D.C. would be the Holocaust Museum. Now take those feelings and compound them again and again until your heart feels like a black hole and you want to just scream in pain and anger.

The museum is a very graphic experience, but with completely justifiable reason. There's no other way for the generations who followed the aftermath of the atomic bombs to understand the absolute horror and inhumanity. "Deplorable" just doesn't quite cover it. "Sickening" is closer, but doesn't adequately describe the necessary indignation Americans should feel towards the leaders who ignored pleas for another way.

None of a lot of what I learned today was ever discussed in my history class. For example, the so-called "Interim Committee" on May 17th decided to strike Hiroshima without prior warning. While the kamikaze bombers who struck Pearl Harbor didn't attack the hospital there, schools, stations, hospitals and medical schools were destroyed at the Nagasaki hypocenter. And the lasting physical damage done to not only those who survived the heat and radiation, but the effect it had on unborn children was terrible. This is about as inhuman as we've seen humanity.

In one part of the room, there were displays of roof tiles, bubbled and distorted from the heat. Brown glass bottles were melted like puddles of honey or molasses. Wooden walls still show the shadows of someone's laundry hung to dry in the morning sun. A photograph of a similar shadow was that of a lookout standing by a ladder.

A small case held what, at a distance, looked like a fused pile of gravel. When I stepped closer, it was hardened clay, glass, metal fragments...and a skeletal hand.

In another room, there was a map showing the stockpiles of nuclear warheads in the world. America has the most: 7,300.

I'll leave it at that.

I needed air and sunlight, so I went out and walked up the street to the Peace Park. The weather was absolutely beautiful and walking through the park under the cherry blossoms did make me feel better. Some of the statues in the Peace Park are very moving, but I'm not a fan of the largest and most revered. At the end of the former prison grounds (the foundations are still there today), the giant sits with one hand up to "call attention to the presence of nuclear arms in the world" and one is outstretched in a peaceful gesture. One leg is folded under itself in a meditative state while the other has a foot planted on the ground as though it would stand and step into action. It's a beautiful sentiment, but the statue is ungainly, distorted and clumsy.

I much prefer the water fountain opposite the statue. Many of the people who were dying in the streets after the blast were begging for water. The fountain was built to honor them in a perpetual offering to put their memories to rest.

I sincerely hope that we never ever ever see the use of nuclear weapons again. Nobody has the right to use them, no cause is justified.