I just had no idea what it would be like.
I thought maybe the city would be a deserted ghost town no one wanted to live in. It’s a thriving busy city.
The memorial park in the middle of the city was just so amazing to see. Seeing the A-Bomb dome as it was on that day. Visiting the memorials around the park. Seeing the mound that was all the ashes left they could find to bury. I spent 4-5 hours in the museum. It was well done – not only a memorial to those that died, but also providing the historical context for the event. It also has the noble goal of preventing that from ever happening again. I tear up just thinking about that day.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, seeing all that, reading survivor accounts, seeing photos, thinking about what it was like….
I was standing in front of the memorial to the children that died, watching school groups of children come up and sing in front of the memorial. An old man came up to me and asked where I was from. Once I said the US, he told me that he was a survivor, his family had been vaporized, but he wanted me to know he didn’t hate Americans he hated WAR and wanted to prevent that from ever happening to anyone else.
When I started crying from the emotional overload of the day, he then apologized to me, which only made it worse.

I think everyone (who can afford to) needs to go to this park one day and just learn & think about what happened.