This is a guest post from my good friend, The Discovering Alcoholic, who writes a top rated recovery blog, www.discoveringalcoholic.com, covering alcoholism, substance abuse, treatment and recovery issues.
Straight from the Hiroshima train station, the public streetcar pushes into the crowded city center following a narrow channel through a blaring landscape of music, horns, and hawkers. Much unlike the corner inset of the tourist map, the actual guide keys to this area are a garish display of commercial signage that both overwhelm and yet substitute for the minimal municipal markers. Everything may not be bright and clean, but there can be no doubt that this city is fervently alive. After just a few stops, I see my destination. Now I am walking through an epitome of order where even the natural wildness of the river and the trees are tamed harmoniously with cut stone and planned lines. Children gallivant, couples bump shoulders, and teenagers carry out hidden agendas while those old enough, wise enough, or perhaps just unlucky enough ponder why and what happened here.
Near the Miyuki Bridge, there was a police box. Most of the victims who had gathered there were junior high school girls from the Hiroshima Girls Business School and the Hiroshima Junior High School No.1. They had been mobilized to evacuate buildings and they were outside when the bomb fell. Having been directly exposed to the heat rays, they were covered with blisters, the size of balls, on their backs, their faces, their shoulders and their arms. The blisters were starting to burst open and their skin hung down like rugs. Some of the children even have burns on the soles of their feet. They’d lost their shoes and run barefoot through the burning fire.
Even today, I clearly remember how the view finder was clouded over with my tears.
~ Testimony of Yoshito Matsushige cameraman for the Chugoku Newspaper
This is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial where the twisted, tattered remains of the old Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall now commonly called the Atomic Bomb Dome are preserved, an edificial testimony to the devastation of the world’s first nuclear weapon target. It is an ugly scar among 30 acres of pristine monuments dedicated to remembrance and peace; without it one could walk the grounds never realizing the absolute destruction of the first ground zero. Looking around, it seemed that many do just that… isn’t that what recovery is all about?
At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial the utter destruction, painful memories, and the slow rebuilding process have all been documented and molded into a recovery program. At least here, the lessons of the war are not forgotten. No anger, resentment, or revenge is displayed- just a message, a peaceful reminder to others that they should not repeat the mistakes of the past and suffer such dire consequences. In fact, as you exit the onsite museum you get exactly that- an audio presentation, a speaker’s meeting of the survivors like Toshiko Saeki who lived through the blast.
I could not help but think of Hiroshima as a recovery Mecca, ideal for the pilgrimage of recovering alcoholics. A vibrant city that was scoured down to the rock bottom by nuclear fires only to be built up again bigger and better under no pretenses of victimization or singular blame, just pure acceptance and a vow to honor the past, enjoy the present, and to protect the future.
If you need a spiritual reminder of what real recovery is all about, I suggest you make the trip to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.
