Inviting spirit trees in hiroshima peace memorial park

Paired Ogatama-no-ki stand guard at the Memorial Mound lying in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Legend has it that Ogatama-no-ki was originally Ogitama-no-ki, meaning inviting spirit tree. This tree has been believed to be favored by gods, goddesses, spirits and numi who would descend and possess the tree when invited. Its academic name is Michelia compressa, family Magnoliaceae. In early spring, fragrant white flowers come into bloom. This site gives you lots of pictures of this tree.

Under the mound is made the vault where some 70,000 unidentified ashes have been enshrined. Numerous corpses were brought in and cremated around here after the a-bombing. Many were cremated without identification; while some 800 were identified but nobody came to claim for. In many cases, families were sacrificed in their entirety. This site, part of Hiroshima Peace Site, an official web site introducing the peace museum and park, gives you precise information about the mound. Go to this site, choose English, and click Guide to Peace Memorial Park to know about the peace park in general.

Now the trees silently greet the visitors; nearby are the colorful paper cranes, symbol of peace in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, dedicated to the deceased.  

One interesting fact:

The tree is designed on Japanese one-yen coin, though many of us don’t even notice. In the same URL I already mentioned, a clear photo of one-yen coin is viewed.


Today's Tohoku-Kanto Earthquake bulletin:

The number of workers who have been exposed to radiation exceeding 100 millisieverts at the plant came to 19 as of March 28, TEPCO said.

Exposure to 100 millisieverts is the legal limit for nuclear plant workers dealing with an emergency, but the limit has been raised to 250 millisieverts during the ongoing crisis, the worst Japan has seen, at the plant some 220 kilometers northeast of Tokyo.

Among the 19, three received treatment at a radiation research center in Chiba Prefecture after they were exposed to radiation of 173 to 180 millisieverts Thursday. They were discharged Monday, with officials of the center saying the exposure has not affected their health.

From Kyodo

Aioi Bridge was the target



Former newel post of Aioi Bridge 



Today’s Tohoku Kanto Earthquake bulletin: More than 70 aftershocks, level 4 or larger on the Japanese scale, happened so far. Those who were engaged in the critical work at the stricken nuclear power plant after the quake and local residents near the plant were tested on radiation they might have been exposed to. It was announced that they only received the low level of radiation and didn’t need treatment. The breakdown of the subjects were: 166 employees of TEPCO, five Self Defense Forces personnel, 13 riot police officers, and 193 locals.  

Hiroshima is a city of waters. Six tributaries of the Ota-gawa river flows in the shape of a rake through the city to the Seto Inland Sea. Naturally there have to be many bridges: more than 2900. Six of them survived the a-bombing and still in use. Interestingly, there were only five major bridges in castle town Hiroshima during the Edo period (1603-1868). That was one typical way of defense but at the same time that’s how authorities regulated free travel by people with the limited number of bridges.

The Aioi Bridge, the intended target for the a-bombing but 300 meters off from the actual hypocenter, barely survived the blast but was repaired and used for another 35 years or so before being replaced by the present plate girder bridge in 1983.

The T-shaped bridge, so easy to identify from the aircraft high up in the air, was an ideal target and bombardier Thomas W. Ferebee had no trouble finding it on board the B29 Superfortress Enola Gay on August 6, 1945.

Part of the roadway was heaved upward due to the blast bouncing back from the river and the hand railing on the north side fell into the water.

When first built by a wealthy family in 1878, the Aioi bridge was comprised of two dogleg wooden bridges meeting at the north corner of the delta of Nakajima-cho, a bustling urban hub in those days. The bridge was named Aioi meaning meeting and joining. Its alias was the “Toll Bridge” because people had to pay a toll to cross the bridge.

A bridge exclusively for streetcars was built upstream of the original Aioi Bridge in 1912 but was washed away in floods more than once. In 1932, a large sturdy bridge both for streetcars and other traffic was constructed. In addition, an extension was built connecting the center of the upstream bridge to the northern end of the Nakajima delta, temporarily making the whole Aioi bridge H-shaped. Later the old wooden bridges were torn down and the Aioi Bridge became T-shaped.

Former newel posts have been preserved at two locations near the bridge. One was of the original wooden bridge and easy to find: between the bridge and the A-bomb Dome. The other was of the previous one and is at the north end of the delta near Peace Clock Tower.

Part of the wrecked girder of the former Aioi Bridge is displayed in the main wing of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where artifacts from 65 or so years back are exhibited.

This URL gives you precise information about the bridge with graphics.

Tohoku Kanto Earthquake and Shinkansen



Sakura arriving at Hiroshima

The day after an unbelievably large-scale earthquake hit Japan’s Tohoku region on March 11, 2011, the Kyushu Shinkansen Super Express line started its full-fledged operation. The opening day was supposed to have been joyful and festive and the media should have reported one happy day; instead there was not much celebration and the service started smoothly but too quietly. On the previous day, people, cars, houses, trains, and nuclear power plants were at the mercy of the magnitude 9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami waves that attacked Tohoku.

I was in Nagasaki, away from home and further away from the earthquake-affected area, about to work for a tour on the next day. The tours, however, were all canceled because all the Japanese ports were closed due to tsunami alerts and warnings issued to every port of the country. Though the port of Nagasaki was least affected and the waves were quiet, the port had to be closed by law. The large passenger ship, Queen Elizabeth 2, safely waiting offshore, skipped calling at Nagasaki and probably sailed to Shanghai.

My fellow tour guides and I left Nagasaki using different transportation measures from usual, for some of the JR lines running along the seashore stopped their operations to be safe. We managed to get on an expressway bus from Nagasaki to Hakata, where we took a Shinkansen Super Express to Hiroshima. We came back earlier than we should have if we had done our tour in Nagasaki. Feeling strange, we were home.

  It didn’t take us long to learn that this earthquake, followed by tsunami waves, was truly unprecedented and besides victimizing people and towns, it left a crippled nuclear power plant in its immediate aftermath.

I watched both domestic TV news, NHK and others, and CNN. I read a Japanese paper and articles in English on the net by New York Times and BBC. I was curious how CNN and other overseas media would report. I didn’t value CNN and New York Times highly as I had expected. BBC articles on the net, I thought, were objective and trustworthy.  

The government and TEPCO might not have been able to announce the matters very swiftly at first and truly there are things in detail I’d like to know and have yet to know but I believe they never fabricated or falsified facts.

The grave nuclear issue is ongoing and many people in Japan will be righteously worried about radiation sneaking into food chain, though at this moment, the possible risk is nominal and they should not panic. Fortunately, Japanese people are relatively calm and not panicking. But I do regret that the general public is not sufficiently aware of what radiation is all about. The country that has been through two nuclear destructions, on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, should have known better. We should have been better educated and should not have had any nuclear power plants at all. We should have studied on nuclear-free countries like New Zealand and should have seriously considered the danger and risk of nuclear power generation. We should have supported the scientists to explore for alternative sustainable energy.



Sakura bound for Shin-Osaka

 Now at the end of this article, let me give you a bit of info about our proud Shinkansen. On March 12, 2011, the Kyushu Shinkansen connecting Hakata and Kagoshima in one hour and 20 minutes started to operate. Some of the Kyushu Shinkansen trains travel as far as to Shin-Osaka, enabling a travel between Kagoshima and Shin-Osaka in less than four hours, the critical travel time for many people to choose either Shinkansen or air travel. If it takes less than four hours, more people choose this very rapid train. The Shinkansen has been in the progress. The magnetic levitated Chuo Shinkansen is in evolution and hopefully its operation will start in 2025.