Jay’s Japan Adventure (The Arrival)

So, we boarded an American Airlines flight for Tokyo. It was one of the new Boeing 777s. Jay was all smiles on the plane and didn’t even sleep for 5 minutes. We finally reached Japan after flying for 12 and ½ hours. It was a long trip. The landing was, can we say, less than perfect. Surprisingly, the wheels didn’t pop off. The landing was more like, "What the hell?!" Jay didn't care, he was just happy to be in Japan.

So after landing in Tokyo, we took off again on Japan Airlines for Osaka. I was just telling Jay about how JAL has the largest fleet of 747s of any airline carrier. As it turned out, we boarded the Boeing and JAL special JAL 100th 747.

Jay was all smiles on the flight, smiling at the flight attendants and getting drinks although he had no idea what he was drinking. He’d just get them, because the girls looked good and he was happy to be flying along.

Hiroshima (warning--graphic)

Jay and I teamed up with another friend of mine, Jay Patel, and headed down to Hiroshima for the day. This was Jay's first time on a Bullettrain. He was trying to look at things zipping by. He looked like the dog on Dr. Doolittle who was looking out the car window at the trees. "Oh God. I feel sick. Tree, tree, tree…"

We and Jay arrived in Hiroshima and first preceded to the Atomic Bomb Dome. This was the Hiroshima City Promotion Hall before the bombing. The Dome building was one of 5 structures that were left standing near the epicenter. This is what the building looks like now. Notice the building and rubble has been preserved intact, to serve as a museum. Here's the plaque at the Atomic Bomb Dome. You have to open the 2 pictures to read the entire statement.

Next, we made our way past several monuments where people, still today, deliver flowers in honor of friends and family members they lost in the explosion. There is a Cenotaph for the Atomic Bomb victims. Here too, people place flowers in remembrance of loved ones.

After viewing the monuments, we made our way into the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Here are many items and artifacts from the bombing. The informational packet says, "On 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the city of Hiroshima fell victim to the world's first atomic bombing. The entire city was virtually leveled; thousands upon thousands of lives were lost. Many of those who managed to survive suffered irreparable physical and psychological damage and still suffer the effects today. (Notice, you can see the Dome building in the background.)

Inside, there were several areas. The first area was art work from people at the time of the atomic bombing. One shows the city on fire. Another painting shows corpses lining the streets outside a department store. Another shows the many bodies that laid in the streets and floated in the rivers. There was one girl, a high school student, who was walking dazed, trying to find help. A statue shows a little girl, who was saying, "Mommy, help me."

As we proceeded upstairs, there were several television screens, stories, artifacts and models. The models showed Hiroshima before and after the atomic bombing. There are so many exhibits and sad stories, we couldn't get them all on film. But here are some of the items we took pictures of. There was the burned summer uniform of a school girl who was caught in the blast who died later that day. The uniform of a school boy who died a few days later. There were metal coins, fused together from the intense heat. A watch where the hands stopped at exact 8:15 a.m. There was the charred lunch box of a boy who never ate the food his mother prepared for him. Burns were severe and in most cases, the patterns of clothing was burned into the skins of the victims. There was the Diorama with Wax Figures of the Atomic Bomb Victims, showing them dazed and walking through the destruction, their clothes and skin hanging off. "Most were never identified except by their belongings they left at their worksites, their bodies or ashes never returned to their families." Many people died at the time of the explosion, leaving nothing but a shadow where they once stood.

The information booklet goes on to say, "The special characteristic of atomic bombs is nuclear radiation, something which conventional weapons never produce. The radiation inflicts severe injuries on the human body. The radiation affected those within about 1 KM of the hypoceneter who received life-threatening doses. Many of them died within a few days…

"At the instant of detonation, the temperature at the center exceeded a million degrees Celsius, generating an enormous fireball. Within 1 second of detonation, it had extended to ins maximum diameter of 280 meters. Temperatures on the surface reached 5,000 degrees C. The powerful heat rays inflicted tremendous damage.