On our last day in Japan we traveled from Kyoto to Fukuoka where we caught the ferry to Busan, South Korea. When looking at the map, we realized Hiroshima was pretty much on the way so we stopped there for the day to learn more about the city’s history and see the site of the world’s first atomic bomb drop.

Getting There and Around

We used our JR pass to take the shinkansen (bullet train) directly from Kyoto to Hiroshima.

Hiroshima has a tour bus that accepts the JR pass and goes in a loop to the city’s main sights which worked out perfectly for us – we didn’t have to pay any extra for use of this really handy transportation option.

The Hiroshima station offers lockers for luggage storage so for about 1,000 Yen (or $10 USD) so we were able to have a luggage-free day. This is a really convenient option for travelers there for a short visit.

A-Bomb Dome

Our first stop was the A-Bomb dome, the iconic building that was one of the few structures near the epicenter left partially standing after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

There are volunteers at the site who are there to share information about the bomb’s impact on the people of Hiroshima. We were approached by a woman who told us more about her own family’s story. Her mother and grandmother were in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing and were at their house a few kilometers from the epicenter (the site of the drop). Her mother and grandmother suffered minor injuries and had to flee the city in the hours after the bomb dropped. The eventually were able to return to their home and had to rebuild most of it. The woman we spoke with was born 6 years after the bomb dropped. She mentioned that she speaks to visitors to encourage peace and advocate for the end to nuclear weapons. She shared her story in English and had an accompanying binder with pictures that she flipped through to further clarify. We appreciated learning her story.

Peace Memorial Park

From there we crossed the river to Peace Memorial Park, the site of the flame that will burn until all nuclear weapons are removed from the planet.

Peace Memorial Museum

Our last stop was the museum which was really tough to visit but important to see. The most impactful part of the museum were exhibits about how the atomic bomb impacted people in Hiroshima. There were tons of pictures of burn victims and statues of victims with their skin appearing to melt off. There were personal objects left behind by victims, inducing tattered clothes they were wearing on that day accompanied by stories of where they were at the time of the bombing. There were even preserved body parts of people who had abnormal growths from the effects of the radiation in the months after the bomb. 70,000 people died immediately from the bomb, and an additional 70,000 died in the next 4 months from injuries and radiation-related illness.

The museum also had information about the science behind nuclear weapons and graphics about the impact of the bomb. There were graphs about the impact based on distance from the epicenter. There also were some frightening graphics comparing the power of the a-bomb dropped on Hiroshima to bombs that exist today – some are up to 2,000 times as powerful.

We left the museum feeling shocked and saddened by the story of the bombing of Hiroshima but grateful for one of the most powerful history lessons we’ve gotten to date. We wish for the same thing that the people of Hiroshima do – an end to nuclear weapons and a peaceful world.

Hiroshima Today

While we didn’t see much of the city, it was clear that Hiroshima is a thriving metropolis today. There are skyscrapers and sprawling buildings and a great public transportation system. It’s presently Japan’s 11th largest city with over 1 million people. It’s hard to believe knowing that nearly the entire city had to be rebuilt in the last 70 years, but you’d never know by just looking at Hiroshima what had happened there.

Visiting Hiroshima was a worthwhile day trip. While it was emotionally challenging, it was logistically quite easy and we’d recommend it to any travelers interested in a powerful world history lesson.