My mum is out visiting me just now, and it has been great to see her. Her flight was luckily delayed an hour so this gave me time to race from work and meet her at the airport. She was driving me crazy approximately twenty minutes later on the train asking every two minutes, "are we nearly there yet?"
On Wednesday we got the shinkansen to Hiroshima (a surprisingly nice city) and looked around the peace museum. This was horrifying, depressing, and made us wonder why on earth we go to museums such as these. Bizzarely I find myself becoming numb to places like this having been to the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, the war museum in Ho Chi Minh City, and the River Kwai memorial museum in Kanchanaburi. It`s strange that we feel the need to bear witness to war horrors while on vacation.
I felt sad and sickened by the fragments of clothes, skin and fingernails that families had clung to as mementoes of loved ones who died in the blast or the firestorms that destroyed Hiroshima. The copies of letters between members of the American war cabinet chosing which cities should be targets bewildered me. The process of war, the logistical details of exterminating as much human life as possible in the most economical way possible, always bewilders me.
Seeing the peace museum in Hiroshima and comparing the experience to other war museums I`ve seen in other countries is an odd feeling. There is no right side or wrong side, everyone is as brutal as everyone else, and ordinary people suffer the same everywhere.
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Hey, hope your mum's having a good time, say hi from me. Yes, war musuems do such, that's why I try to avoid all culture on holiday. Show me a large bit of water to swim in and I'm happy. Although obviously not at Christmas in Japan. Talk soon.
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