Hiroshima

I am now home in Barrington at the Barrington area library writing my final couple of entries of my trip.

Woke up early as we were catching a train from Kyoto to Hiroshima. We jumped on the famous Shinkansen train, which is also known as the bullet train. This train looks like a bullet and travels at a top speed of 300kmph. A normal train from Kyoto to Hiroshima would take over eight hours, but on the Shinkansen it only takes an hour and a half.

We got on the train and all sorts of crazy stuff started to happen. First off when we started we were jolted pack in our seats in a whiplash like motion. I was thankful I did not bring any coffee on board. The countryside was going by so fast that we could not even see it not that we would have been able to enjoy it anyway pinned against our seats like we were.

I struggled to get up and go to the bathroom, but this was a big mistake. The force of the train traveling so fast caused a great mess. I embarrassingly walked back to my seat trying to hide the stains, but we were moving so fast the stain dried instantly. At one point it got dark, and I thought that we had entered a tunnel, but we had traveled so fast that we outraced the sun and it was now dark.

We finally stopped at a station and were able to relax a bit. Suddenly, Superman entered the car and took a seat right in front of us. We asked superman what he was doing on the Shinkansen. He looked at us kind of sheepishly and said “hey, I am faster than a speeding bullet, but not faster than a speeding bullet train.”

Of course the last three paragraphs were complete fiction, but they were all jokes that Rich, Liz, and I told on the train. We tried to think of as many stupid bullet train jokes as we could in the hour and a half it took to get there, but the train was so fast we could not think of many.

We arrived and checked into our hotel and then went out and walked around Hiroshima. It is really a beautiful city. It is right near the coast and a really pretty river flows through it on its way to the ocean.

The first place we headed to was the peace park. Outside the peace park is the only remnant of the atomic blast. It is called the A bomb dome. This was one of the few structures left standing in the middle of the city if you could call it standing. It was basically just a skeleton of a building with rubble everywhere. Before the bomb it was obviously not called the A bomb dome, but it was some sort of building that served as a prefecture industrial promotion hall. I am not sure what this is, but it held some sort of trade shows. Everyone in the building was instantly killed. As we were to find out later, the people killed instantly were the lucky ones.

After viewing the bombed out building, we then entered the peace park. This park was absolutely beautiful and filled with fountains, statues, and the ever present cherry blossom trees. We saw one statue that was filled with paper cranes, which is a famous children’s memorial dedicated to a young girl who died from leukemia due to exposure to the bomb. Sadako Sasaki vowed to make 1000 paper cranes because she was told by a friend that there is an old story that said if a person folded 1000 paper cranes they would be restored to health. Sadako only folded 644 before passing away. A children’s memorial was established here and school children from around the world send paper cranes to honor the children who died in the blast and also to honor Sadako Sasaki’s will to live.

We then entered the museum, and we each got an audio self tour guide. This guide was like a walkman and there were 56 places in the museum where you would punch in the appropriate number and a voice would tell you more about the corresponding artifact.

The museum was really laid out well and did a great job of describing the event and really hit you with the sadness and the horror of the bombing. The first part covered a short overview of the history of Hiroshima. Then it covered a short overview of the war. Then it explained in detail how Hiroshima came to be chosen as the target. The military planners wanted to bomb a city that had not experienced much conventional bombing in order to adequately observe the bomb’s effect. This ruled out the capital Tokyo because by this time Tokyo had been leveled a number of times.

They had actual documents from military planners discussing the choices of cities. At first there were 16 cities chosen and this was narrowed down to three. Yokohama, Niigata, and Hiroshima were the last three cities in the running. The final nail in the coffin for Hiroshima was clear weather over its horizon on August 6th. The exhibit also explains why the bomb was used on Japan and not Germany. Military planners were fearful that Germany was already working on a bomb. They thought that if they bombed Germany that German scientists could test the aftermath and quickly develop it’s own bomb. They did not think Japan capable of doing this.

The next room was dedicated to the blast itself. As you entered this part of the museum there was a watch in a plastic case with the time of 8:15 frozen on it. This was when the bomb struck 580 meters above ground at the Shima hospital. There was a 360 degree huge panoramic picture of the city after the bomb struck showing complete devastation. There was also a huge model of Hiroshima both before the bomb and after the bomb.

The most emotional part of the exhibit was a whole room dedicated to belongings of people that were victims of the bombing and then told their story. For instance there would be a tattered set of children’s clothing and the exhibit would read that they belonged to a young girl exposed to the bomb. The girl was exposed to the bomb 4km from home, but managed to get back home where her parents did not even recognize her because her face was so bloated and scarred. They could only recognize her from her voice. She passed away on August 7th. What was amazing was that many of these victims after getting burned found their way home. Some traveling miles in order to get there. There were like 20 of these right in a row, and I do not think there was a dry eye in this room after reading all these testimonies.

In many cities the Japanese were destroying houses in order to create fire lanes in case of US bombs. By destroying houses this could stop the spread of fires that erupted after US bombs were dropped. Many of the people doing this task were school children. Over 8,000 children were at work on these fire lanes in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped. Less than 2,000 of them survived.

What I liked about the museum is it did not take a stand against the US and say we were awful for doing this. Instead it took a stand against atomic weapons and war in general and opposed any proliferation of atomic weapons. It basically laid out what happened in Hiroshima and said this is awful, this is what happens in war, war should be stopped, which is obviously the right lesson to be learned.

The exhibit then had rooms dedicated to the survivors of the blast, which was just as bad. Other exhibits included the history of atomic weapons and a lesson on atomic and nuclear energy.

It took us four hours to get through this museum. We were completely drained and decided we needed to hit a bar. We finally found one called the Love Pop bar or something strange like that and ordered a few beers. We were the only people in there. The bartender was really friendly. At one point he came over with a little diagram that he drew, which represented questions he wanted to ask us. The first diagram had a picture of a businessman and a tourist and he meant to ask why we were in Japan. The second diagram was a globe he had drawn with all the countries drawn in and a question mark next to it. He wanted to know where we were from. The third diagram was three pictures of the heads of me, Liz, and Rich with the word friend next to our faces with a question mark next to it. He wanted to know how we knew each other. As we left he gave us a mint and walked us to the elevator and smiled and waived as the elevator closed.

We then went for dinner. We went to a place that served this crepe like meal called Okonomiyaki. We sat down and the burner of the stove was right in front of us and the lady cooked it right before our eyes. The dinner consisted of a crepe that was first topped with noodles. She then topped it with bbq sauce, egg and all sorts of other good things. The meal looked like a giant stuffed pancake. We agreed that this meal would be a great late night snack when you are drinking in the same manner as burritos are.

After that we returned back to the hotel early after a long emotional day.

I Shall Return

One thing that I definitely wanted to do in my time in the Philippines was to take a tour of Corregidor Island, which is a tadpole shaped island that guards the opening of Manila Bay. This tour was in doubt due to the way I was feeling recently and also due to the time constraints in the Philippines. I was fortunately able to squeeze it in and to feel good enough to make this tour. I think the non stop traveling plus the Asian heat had started to take a cumulative effect on me.

I walked down to the bay and secured a reservation on the boat for the next day. I was still feeling a little light headed, but who knows when I would return, so I made a reservation. The next day I boarded the boat, which was a very luxurious air conditioned liner filled with people going to the island. I immediately felt better in the air conditioned atmosphere of the boat, which gave me an incredible insight to why I was feeling so bad of late. Not only had I tired myself out with my travels lately, but I had also been traveling in very hot climates lately and staying in non-air conditioned rooms. The combination of the heat, lack of sleep, traveling, and alcohol had caused me to run out of gas, or more appropriately run into too much gas.

Corregidor Island is a very significant spot in the Pacific Theater. When Japan ran amok in the Pacific in the days following Pearl Harbor they were able to take many areas with the damaged US fleet unable to respond. They overran Thailand, French Indochina, and the Philippines within days. The US force on the mainland of the island of Luzon were trapped on the Bataan peninsula and had to endure the consequent death march to camps inside the Philippines. The only place that was able to hold out to the Japanese onslaught was Corregidor Island. A small contingent of US and Philippine forces were able to bravely hang on. The island actually became a Pacific Alamo.

The Japanese timetable for the surrender of Corregidor was one month, but the small force on the island held out for five months and disrupted the Japanese from further action and many think this heroic defense stopped the Japanese further Japanese aggression. The US and Filipino force surrendered on May 6, 1942 and bought the damaged US fleet time to rebuild. General MacArthur was on the island, but was ordered to flee the island leaving his troops by a direct order from FDR as the American Chiefs of Staff recognized MacArthur’s brilliance and did not want to see him lost to the Japanese. MacArthur argued that he did not want to leave, but with a direct order he had to. As he left, he vowed to return and supposedly said this as he was getting on a boat at a harbor on the island. There is a statue near this point commemorating this line of MacArthur holding out his arm with those famous words set in stone in front of the statue.

The island itself was absolutely beautiful. Great views of the surrounding landscape including some impressive mountains rising from the coast on the Bataan peninsula. After getting off the boat we were herded onto little buses that cruised us around the island stopping at key battery positions of American guns.

The island was equally important in 1945 when the Americans retook Manila. MacArthur believed that the Japanese on the island were expecting a seaborne landing, so he tricked them by dropping airborne troops on the island, which was no easy feat because the island is very small. This maneuver worked brilliantly and the Americans retook the island with very light casualties. MacArthur stood up to his pledge and returned.

This tour was one of the best historical tours I have ever taken. They showed films on the War both coming to the island and returning to Manila. Each bus had a tour conductor that was very knowledgeable about the battle and the war in general. The tour guide spoke about each stop we went arrived at and then allowed us to walk around the different spots and take pictures and check out the memorials. Both the films and the tour conductor did a good job of explaining the battles of Corregidor and also did a good job of placing the history of Corregidor in the context of what was happening in the Pacific theater.

After returning to Manila I headed back to my pension. My last four days in the Philippines I headed back to Angeles City to spend with my friend Richard and his wife Liza. I ended up not doing a whole lot here. I was exhausted from my travels and spent much of the time just resting in my hotel.

The day before leaving from the Philippines I headed back to Manila to be close to the airport for my departure the next day. On the way to the airport the next morning my taxi driver told me to look at the car next to us. We were stuck in traffic and there was a cab full of pretty Filipino women looking at me and laughing. I smiled and waived. I have never gotten so much attention from pretty women than here in the Philippines. They love American men here. Just about everywhere I went I was greeted by smiles and calls of “handsome” or gwapo (handsome in Philipines.) Probably 75 percent of these women were probably prostitutes, but I believe it is better to be called handsome by a prostitute than an asshole. The girls in the cab next to me took out their phones and were wanting my phone number. I had sold my cell phone to Richard the day before. Of course I could do nothing here since I was leaving the country, but I stuck my arm out the window of the cab and yelled to the girls “I shall return.”

National Park and Ann’s Father’s Farm

I had the good fortune to travel with Ann to her family’s house outside of Bangkok in the town of Suphanburi. We stayed there one night and then we left for her father’s coffee and rubber farm near the Myanmar border. On the way there we visited historical places in Kanchanaburi like the River Kwai and the World War II cemetery there. I was really fortunate to have such good friends in Thailand. We awoke early the next morning, and they loaded up the family SUV and Op, Ann’s brother who was the family driver, took the wheel. They told me it would take four hours to get there and on the way we would stop at a waterfall and the River Kwai museum and bridge.

Our first stop was the town of Kanchanaburi, which is the biggest town in the area. In this town is the famous River Kwai bridgehead, a World War II museum, and a World War II cemetery. We entered the Jeath war museum, which is basically a little fake POW hut that holds pictures and other artifacts from the building of the bridge. At first I thought Jeath was just another funny misspelling by Thai people and that they intended the word “death,” but in fact it is an acronym for the countries involved in the building of the bridge. The acronym stands for J-Japan, E-England, A-Australia and America, T-Thailand, and H for Holland. The river Kwai Bridge was supposed to have taken five years to build, but due to the oppressive means used by the Japanese it was built in 16 months. 100,000 civilians died and around 16,000 POWs from various countries died from building the bridge due to the mistreatment and various jungle diseases.

Next, we drove to the actual bridge and Oat and I walked across while he told me what he knew about the history. The heat was the most oppressive heat I have ever felt. I was so hot I was woozy, and even though I was at a place where I really wanted to see, I was pretty indifferent to what was going on due to the heat. It was the kind of heat that just exhausted you almost immediately. It was so hot that even focusing attention was difficult. I walked through the hut like a zombie. Normally in World War II museums, I want to read everything, but in a trance I went through this one pretty quickly. Oat told me to take any pictures that I wanted to, but the effort of opening my fanny pack to get my camera was too in this stifling heat. I think I took one to pretend I was interested in order to appease my guests. I think the area we were in used to be a jungle, but the area has been completely deforested and in the place of the trees are fields of sugar cane. The area once was a jungle, so it was naturally very hot, but the loss of the jungle vegetation has made it even more hot.

After this we took off for the farm. In America when going somewhere we usually go like crazy to get there and then try to enjoy the time there as much as possible. Not so with Thai people. They take their time in all aspects of the journey. We stopped along the road to pick up fresh hand-picked vegetables, skin cream at a market, and we took several bathroom breaks. With seven people in a car it is hard to make good time. Each time we stopped I had no idea what we were doing and why we were stopping or for how long. At one point Op pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and just coasted for a second. Oat then informed me that the slope was downhill, but we were going backwards due to the magnetic field, and Ann’s dad wanted to experiment with the slope. Oat asked if I had ever seen this before. I was still a little punch drunk from the heat, but I looked ahead of me to see if I could ascertain the extent of the downhill slope. It looked pretty level to me, so the fact we were coasting backwards did not impress me, but I did not want to argue, so I said no I had not seen this before and agreed that it was quite amazing.

We finally got to their farm around 4pm and there was not much daylight left. Ann’s Dad owns a rubber tree farm and a coffee farm near the Western border of Myanmar. The rubber is harvested by these black cups that are placed around the tree fastened by a metal fastener. The tree is then cut open above the cup and then the liquid seeps into the cup. The liquid in the cup is then congealed somehow and produced into rubber. The farm was basically 100 acres with a couple of wooden shacks in the center of it. All of the workers on the farm are Burmese who had fled their country.

A National Park was adjacent to their property, so Op, Eve, Oat, Ann, Ann’s mother, and I then got back in the car and drove the couple of bumpy miles to the National Park entrance. We drove down this dirt road in the middle of nowhere and then came to the entrance to the park. There was a little hut at the entrance of the park with a barrier across the road. Ann went to the hut and registered us and then the girl in the hut pulled the drawstring and let us in. We drove around a couple of bends and then parked. There was a sign to the waterfall that said 800 meters. Ann and Ann’s mother stayed at the parking lot while the boys headed to the waterfall to play.

The waterfall was awesome and amazingly refreshing. Right below the waterfall was a really nice deep pool and after being in the hellish heat all day the water felt incredible. We swam for a time in the pool and then went above the waterfall and climbed up these rocks to another mini waterfall. Up above we could actually sit in these pools as the water rushed over us from above. It was great. One of the most amazing outdoor experiences I have ever had. I am sure there are some pretty venomous snakes in the area. Oat had told me that Ann almost died from being bitten by a snake near her farm. The boys did not seem worried, so I followed their lead and ran around the jungle trail with no fear. I have done some camping in poisonous snake territory in the U.S. and it is rare to see them since they are more afraid of you than likewise. I was pretty sure poisonous snakes in Southeast Asia acted the same.

The swim really revived me. I felt like a new person. Unfortunately, Ann was suffering from the heat and actually threw up on the way back to the farm. It was so hot even the Thais were suffering. On the way back to the farm, we stopped at a little store to get some drinks. Up to this point I had not paid for a thing and was a little worried about it. It was nice saving money, but I felt like a bit of a moocher. Ann’s parents had paid for everything so far. At lunch on this day I had asked Oat if I should pay for something. I wanted to pay for the whole lunch, but I was afraid of offending Ann’s parents by extending such an offer. Oat said not to worry about it, but just thank her parents. At this store I really was thinking on passing on beer as I was quite tired, but Oat said maybe I should buy some beer for Ann’s dad. Brilliant I said to Oat and bought 6 24 oz beers. No better way to thank hospitality then by buying the host beer. That is one of the many beautiful things about beer. If there is one thing that I am an expert on it was buying beer. This was right up my alley.

When we got back to the farm Ann joked that I was trying to get her father drunk. I felt like telling her that she might be the expert about traveling in Thailand, but I was the expert in buying beer. We got back to the farm and had dinner and drank beer and looked at the amazing stars. At one point there was a lively discussion about the size of Eve’s penis. Apparently his shorts had fallen off in the waterfall at one point and Oat had said it was a good thing I didn’t take a picture of it as I was snapping many pictures with my digital camera. I assured him if I did, I would promptly erase it. Eve was 16 and Ann and Op where 24 and 25, so poor Eve as the baby received the brunt of the joke-making in the family.

We had a great political discussion that night. This was on the eve of the Thai election, so we had talks about our relationship with their country. Apparently, Bush and their prime-minister Taksin get along quite well. They did not like Bush that much, but they said that the relationship between the two leaders was good for Thai business. Op then told me that at his university they had a refugee camp set up for the foreign tsunami survivors. He said that it was very sad as many of the survivors had only the clothes on their back as they lost all of their possessions and in some cases could not find any of their friends and families. He related that they were extremely unhappy, as you can imagine, and had this almost dead like look in their eyes as they had been completely devastated by the tragedy. We ate a variety of snacks for dinner. Everything cooked was done over the fire. They also had some rice set out. Ann’s father joked that it was a Thai barbeque. Although Ann’s parents could not speak English, it was easy to communicate with them as all three of their children spoke fluent English as did Oat. They were extremely pleasant people and I was very appreciative of their wonderful hospitality. We then went to sleep in their little hut. It was much cooler here as we were in the hills a bit, so it made for easy sleeping.