Key #33: A Heartrending Wonder

Arguably, the best article about the wonder in question would consist of the above title alone - or maybe even of no words whatsoever but pictures. Each of them is worth a thousand words - and many more in this case, because almost any words (in particular, big words like “disaster”, “tragedy”, “catastrophe”) are completely inadequate. Unless they come from someone like Eizo Nomura, the man who was looking for a document just past 8 am on August 6, 1945. The document was nowhere to be seen, so Nomura decided to check the archive in the building's vault. That's where he was when a Little Boy fell on Hiroshima. The building was incinerated, together with all 36 of Nomura's colleagues. The only survivor, he lived on for 37 more years and published a diary titled “My Experience of the Atomic Bomb”. A dry, matter-of-factly account of that morning's events spanned over several hours.

The Diary Exhibition at the Hiroshima Memorial Museum&Park consists of black slabs dotted with white symbols - rather small words (both literally and metaphorically) and big numbers

The relative sizes of the symbols seem to be an important part of the exhibition design: the numbers dominate the words on the slabs - just like objective facts dominate intrinsically subjective descriptions in the diary. It's that uncanny objectivity - in a situation that is screaming for anything but - that turns the Diary Exhibition into the most stunning and overwhelming experience of the whole Memorial Park. A remarkable achievement, considering the renown of the more conspicuous exhibits, such as the Flame of Peace

the Peace Bell

the Atomic Dome

or Cenotaph (Monument to Korean Victims and Survivors)

Different in shapes and sizes, they all send the same message - one of compassion, support and…forgiveness. While any individual Japanese could choose to be bitter, resentful, outraged (and who could blame those who did!), Japan as a country and a society made the opposite choice. It is that choice combined with an almost unfathomable ability to forgive without forgetting that is in the heart of the Memorial Park Wonder. The structures, refined, elegant and sad as they are, are just visual representations of that inner light guiding the whole nation.

There are, of course, sunny days in Hiroshima but on the day I visited the park, it was overcast and raining intermittently. Somehow, it felt like the most appropriate weather - as if Nature decided to align itself with the creators of the Memorial…