A remarkable series of events is ensuring that Hiroshima will go down in history for far more inspirational reasons than the A-bomb.
By Steve John Powell
On a torrid August day in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, lotus flowers were blooming in the pond surrounding the Peace Bell. A party of elementary school children in their bright yellow hats lined up to toll the bell; all visitors are welcome to do so, and its hopeful sound regularly booms out across the park. While they waited their turn, the children pointed excitedly at the powder-blue dragonflies darting among the blooms.
These flowers have great symbolic importance in Japan. At temples throughout the country you’ll see statues of Buddha seated in a lotus blossom. The way the exquisite flower grows out of the mud at the bottom of a pond symbolises how Buddha rose above suffering to find enlightenment.
But the lotus flowers in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park have added significance, reflecting how the city rose from the ashes to forge its own renaissance. In August 1945, at the end of World War II, US forces dropped an atomic bomb over the city, killing tens of thousands of people. Hiroshima was a charred wasteland, and people widely believed, based on the words of Dr Harold Jacobsen, a scientist from the Manhattan Project, that nothing would grow, or live, in the city for 70 years.
But then a remarkable series of events ensured that Hiroshima would also go down in history for far more inspirational reasons.
First, by autumn 1945, weeds began to sprout from the scorched earth, confounding the expert’s predictions. The following summer, oleanders bloomed. Camphor trees – many of them hundreds of years old – sprouted new branches. Their recovery touched the hearts of local people. The oleander and the camphor were later proclaimed Hiroshima’s official flower and tree, cherished symbols of the city’s resilience.
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http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20171112-how-hiroshima-rose-from-the-ashes