never forget

aching hearts

at hiroshima

cranes ease pain

This haiku is my response to Ronovan Writes #Weekly #Haiku #Poetry Prompt #Challenge 347 ACHE and Ease. Visit this site to see many other haiku responses from around the world.

Also I am adding another haiku and photo to remember Hiroshima. I first visited the Peace Park and Museum in 1990 with Jill and brought each of my school groups here. Our students would make 1000 peace cranes with their sister school hosts in Osaka and leave them at the Sadako memorial in the Peace Park. A vist to the Peace Museum is a chilling reminder of the horror of nuclear weapons and the stupidity of war.

nimble fingers
hiroshima cranes
signs of peace

never forget

from the past
reminder of war
seeking peace

The Hiroshima Prefectural Building stands today as a memorial to the futility of war and the insane, incomprehensible, destructivness of nuclear weapons. This was one of few concrete buildings in Hiroshima on the morning of August 6th 1945 and one of a small number of buildings to remain in structure after the explosion and fires that ravaged the entire city, even though what we see today is a concrete shell only. The survivors of Hiroshima left the building to stand as a visual memorial of that morning. All tourists to Japan should visit either one or preferably both the the Peace Parks and memorial museums at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Three times I led groups of students and teachers on trips to Japan visiting our sister school in Osaka but also spending time at the Hiroshima Peace Park and Museum. On each occasion when my group gathered in the park after experiencing the museum there were few dry eyes, no one spoke, the silence was all consuming.