Highlights from Japan

After Osaka, I went to visit Miah and Dwain and family who now live just outside of Tokyo.   Fortunately, Miah wasn't working this year and so we had some nice quality time with her and F; plus the Cherry Blossoms were in full bloom!

 

Hiroshima

The setting to one of my favorite books - Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is a children's historical novel written by Canadian-American author Eleanor Coerr and published in 1977. It is set in Japan after World War II. Wikipedia

It was a beautiful day to walk around the Peace Memorial Park where there is the Children's Peace Memorial with a metal crane to ring a bell and a metal statue of a girl holding up a crane.  Also many glass boxes of folded paper cranes from children all over the world.

I had some time to reflect the unforgiving consequences of the effects of the Atomic Bomb as I walked around the remains of the building it hit and from the binders of information which a group put together in multiple languages to "educate" the visitors.

This is the building  that the Atomic Bomb hit.

It was called the Hiroshima Prefecture Industrial Promotion Hall before it was destroyed by the atomic bomb August 6, 1945.

It is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.