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National Geographic : 1960 Dec
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but it does. In Hiroshima, one feels, things should not be as they are in other places. A short walk from the hotel is a bright, new exhibit hall where the industrial products of a Hiroshima reborn are arranged in orderly array for potential customers. The variety is astounding: bug killers, tins of loquats and chicken kebab, electrical equipment, small machine tools, player pianos, rice harvesters, tennis rackets, stuffed toys, scrubbing brushes, and galvanized pails. Downtown Hiroshima is a typical cluster of modern steel-and-concrete buildings, and streetcars clatter rapidly through heavy traf fic. Business is better, storekeepers tell you, than before the war. There are no signs of destruction here, and seemingly no unpleasant memories. If there are, they are concealed beneath a scar tissue thicker even than that left by atomic burns. Flowers Bloom Where Horror Reigned Only a couple of blocks away, though, on the way back to the hotel, stands the twisted skeleton of the Industrial Exhibition Hall, a domed building which was near the center of the explosion. It has been left unrepaired, a permanent reminder of horror incarnate. In front, making a mockery of earlier predic tions that atom-scorched earth would bear no plants for generations, bloom clusters of scarlet flowers. From the hill called Hijiyama, one may look down on nearly all of Hiroshima. From here the extent of the damage is more impres sive. Most reconstruction has taken place in the center of the city; on the outskirts there are still long stretches of temporary shacks. The next day was Sunday, the first Sunday in December, and I went to the stucco Church of the Resurrection. I slipped off my shoes in the vestibule and walked across a bare floor to take my seat on one of the 20 plain pine benches, covered with thin green cush ions. The walls were of plaster and un finished pine, the lectern of plain wood. The Episcopal service began, and with my Japa nese fellow worshipers I sang the familiar hymns to which they put unfamiliar words. The lesson was from the 21st chapter of St. Luke-and it seemed strangely appropriate to that place and that day. The minister's voice was firm and clear, and I followed in my own King James Version: "But when ye shall hear of wars and com motions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by.... Nation shall rise against na- KODACHROME( NATIONALGEOGRAPHICSOCIETY Hiroshima preserves the battered dome of its Industrial Exhibition Hall as a reminder of the historic atomic bombing of August 6, 1945. Not long after that holocaust, some scientists predicted that nothing would grow for 70 years. The prophecy proved unfounded; within three years trees were budding again. These cannas bloom a few hundred yards from the blast's center. tion... and fearful sights and great signs shall there be. ... "Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are com ing on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken .. . Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled. "Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away." The pump organ began again, and we sang a final hymn. Outside in the cold sunshine several members of the congregation bowed politely to me as we parted. I walked back to the hotel, going out of my way to pass once more that blasted building and its defiant blossoms, symbols of man's power to destroy and nature's irresistible demand for rebirth. 775
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