sixty-five years (and three days; as always, i'm a little late).

Before I got there, the only thing I knew about Hiroshima was that we had dropped an atomic bomb on it. For me, Hiroshima was that menacing mushroom cloud. I expected it to be a mournful memorial city, perpetually wrapped in gloom, a place where every activity would be dampened and shadowed by the terrible thing that had happened there. I wondered if its residents would despise me, maybe confront me angrily, for having the insensitivity to come to a place where my county had caused so much pain.

But life, as has been noted, goes on. And it has definitely gone on in Hiroshima, which is, on the surface anyway, an ordinary, busy Japanese city, with stores and streetcars and gardens and temples and an old castle for tourists to visit.

The atomic bomb, too, has become a kind of tourist attraction. Visitors get their pictures taken standing in front of various bomb-related sites and memorials; the people - especially the younger ones - are often smiling, sometimes laughing, like tourists standing in front of the World's Largest Ball of Twine.

We chose to be in Hiroshima on August 5th, the anniversary of the attack. Along with thousands of other visitors, we attended the annual memorial ceremony, held in the morning, when the bomb had been dropped. On our way in, some Boy Scouts gave us flowers to place on the memorial to those who died. The crowd - around us, anyway - seemed quite cheerful. Our interpreter, Yuka Yamaoka, told us that the anniversary activities have taken on an almost festive tone over the years. She said that many A-bomb survivors resent this and no longer attend the public events, preferring to hold private services.

There was an unusually large contingent of media people on hand for the ceremony, because news was going to be made: the mayor of Hiroshima, in his official peace declaration, was going to include, for the first time, a brief statement acknowledging Japan's guilt for the suffering it had caused in Asian countries during World War II.

Japan, as you surely know, has been much criticized for allegedly failing to take responsibility for its actions before and during the war. Critics charge that Japan has tried to position itself as a victim, forced to fight in self-defense against racist Western nations that would never allow Japan to achieve its rightful place in the world. Critics also charge that the Japanese tend to equate the bombing of Hiroshima with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the two events canceling each other out, with neither side holding the moral high ground. These are still very sensitive topics in Japan, and the debate continues to rage between those who want Japan, the land of harmony and nonconfrontation, to confront its history, and those who see no point in dredging up all this nonharmonious unpleasantness, fifty years later.

But the dropping of the A-bomb is definitely, and understandably, remembered in Japan. The problem, for some, is how it's remembered and its historical context or lack of it. [...]

This is why it was considered newsworthy that the mayor of Hiroshima, Takashi Hiraoka, acknowledged Japanese guilt in his Peace Declaration during the memorial ceremony. The translation of his speech said:

Japan inflicted great suffering and despair on the peoples of Asia and the Pacific during its reign of colonial domination and war. There can be no excuse for these actions. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Pacific War. Remembering all too well the horror of this war, starting with the attack on Pearl Harbor and ending with the atomic bomb, we are determined to work anew for world peace.

The ceremony was held outdoors in Peace Memorial Park, near the center of the blast zone. We sat with the crowd on folding chairs, facing the Memorial Cenotaph, which contains the names of the bomb victims. A stage had been erected for dignitaries and speakers; we listened through earphones to a running translation. For me, the most moving moment came at the beginning - the ritual offering of water by representatives of the victims' families. After the bomb blast, many of the dying cried out constantly for water - mizu - but there was none; now, finally, they receive it.

It was a hot, still morning. It became almost unbearably still at eight-fifteen, when one minute of silence was observed, during which you could imagine the sound, precisely forty-six years earlier, of a B-29 droning overhead. Then a bell tolled, the mayor gave his peace declaration, and some doves were set free.

Until then the commentary had been simple, brief, and powerful. Then the politicians spoke, five of them, including the prime minister, Toshiki Kaifu. Five men in virtually identical dark suits giving virtually identical, mechanical, banal speeches. All of them were sorry, from the bottom of their hearts. All of them offered their condolences to the victims' families. All of them hoped this would never happen again. All of them were for peace.

I guess all politicians, from all over the world, attend some school where they learn how to reduce anything - anything - to verbal sludge. Granted, it has to be difficult for politicians to talk about Hiroshima, because what can they say?

So maybe they shouldn't say anything.

After the ceremony we moved forward with the crowd toward the cenotaph, where we left the flowers that the Boy Scouts had given us. I wanted this to be a moving moment, but it wasn't, at least not for me. The crow was packed together, with people jostling, talking, shoving forward. It was like exiting from a basketball game. I thrust my arm forward through the crowd, put my flowers down, and turned away.

We also went through the memorial museum. Some of the exhibitions are scientific, explaining how big the atomic fireball was, how big the blast area was, how the radiation sickness advanced, how many people died. But the most powerful exhibits are intensely personal: charred clothing,; twisted eyeglass frames; a dark human shape on some granite steps caused when a person's body blocked the blast rays, a shadow of death.

I found myself weeping, out of sorrow and helplessness and guilt. But I also felt anger. Because the way the museum presents it, the atomic bomb was like a lightning bolt - something nobody could foresee, and nobody could prevent. It was as though one day, for no reason, the Americans came along, literally out of the blue, and did this horrible thing to these innocent people.

I don't know if it's possible to justify what happened to Hiroshima - I certainly wouldn't want to try to justify it to the victims' families. But I found myself wanting to shout to the other museum visitors: Do you know WHY my country did this? Do you wonder what would make a civilized country do such a thing? I'm not sure that I know the answer, but the museum doesn't even address the question. And I don't think just saying "No more Hiroshimas" over and over again, like a mantra, is enough to guarantee that it will never happen again.

That evening we returned to the Peace Park to watch the candle boats - little paper boats, thousands of them, floating down the river, each carrying a lit candle, symbolizing a victim. It's a lovely sight, and it drew a huge crowd, in a fine mood; families were talking and laughing, kids were racing around, vendors were hawking shaved ice cones and glowing plastic bracelets. It was a carnival atmosphere. You could see that, in another fifty years, this anniversary will have lost all its meaning, the way that for many people in the United States, Memorial Day means nothing more than picnics and softball.

I didn't want this. I wanted Hiroshima to be reverent that night, or introspective, or even angry. Anything but festive.

Of course it doesn't matter what I want. Nobody I know suffered here. I have no right to tell the Japanese how to remember Hiroshima. And of course there's no way I could know what each person along that river was thinking, watching those little flickering candles drift toward the sea.

Dave Barry
Dave Barry Does Japan
Chapter 10: Hiroshima
1992