Hiroshima

The train arrives, and I take a deep breath, preparing myself.

Then I remember that it's not 1945 and that there is still a city here. As I gaze out at Hiroshima's skyscrapers, I shake my head. Intellectually, I know that expecting this place to be a bombed out crater of a city is not only wrong, but also childish. Still, as I walk out of the train station I can't help but look around for some signs of destruction. Instead I find a bustling metropolis.

It takes me a while to find a trolley, but I do, and soon I'm on my way to the hostel. Halfway through the ride I give up my seat to a woman in her fifties, who greets me with a generous smile. A few minutes later, the seat next to her opens up, and she indicates to me to sit down. I can tell she speaks no English, if she had she would try to open up a conversation. Still, I smile, and we have a moment where our sentiments trump the language barrier and a connection is made.

Then the trolley turns the corner, and it's right there – the Hiroshima Dome – last and only physical memory of the destruction of the very first atomic bomb ever detonated in anger.

I feel like I've been sucker punched. I look over to my companion. She won't meet my eye.

Two hours later I've checked in and am out at a bar with Ben and a girl whose name I don't remember. Ben is half French, half Asian, and his passport reads Australian. The girl is German by nationality, though ethnically she is some gorgeous combination of Middle-east and North African, I think. And then there's me – the European mutt American. I think dad Dad's sister Nancy once said there's some Native American in me; if there is, it's not enough to keep me from being pasty.

I tell Ben I'm walking over the A-Bomb Dome tonight. He wants to come. I nod, but secretly hope he changes his mind. This has become a thing for me. I like Ben, and we are going to go tomorrow, after a castle and the peace museum, but tonight, I think I'd prefer if it were me and the echoes.

I walk across Peace Memorial Park alone. Japanese pass me by, and I wonder if they know I'm here to have my own secret ceremonials at their public place of memorial and pain. I wonder how many Americans are compelled to do this. I wonder if I'll be able to hold it together.

The dome is lit up at night, with floodlights and the glow of the city around it. It is a shattered husk of a building: internal braces put up after the bombing as well as extensive preservative work make it appear as it did right after the attack.

A sign tells me that the bomb exploded roughly half a kilometer straight up and west from where I'm standing – less than a mile.

Suddenly it is 1945, and a bright flash appears above me. My brain doesn't even have time to process what is happening before a wall of fire and overpressure and catastrophic nuclear chain reaction turns me first into ashes and then scatters those ashes before the continuing firestorm. There is literally nothing left of me, and I put out a nonexistent hand, and suddenly I'm back, left hand gripping a tree so hard it hurts.

I am breathing hard, and feel dizzy. My body wants to weep, but I won't let it. Not tonight. Not here.

Exhausted rage fills me. This is history. This is my home court. I know why this happened. I know when it happened. I know the prelude, the event and the aftermath probably better than most Americans.

I ask myself the same question I've always asked myself.

"Was it worth it?"

I wonder if Harry Truman ever asked that.

This was done with intent. My grandfather's fathers gave the order to murder over seventy thousand men, women and children in this city alone.

It saved millions of lives in the long run – theirs and ours.

In the short term, it took less than a second to burn a city to the ground and kill double the amount dead at Gettysburg – all noncombatants.

The shell of the building seems to challenge me. I can almost hear the ghosts around me. I am so tired – tired of being told that you have to kill, tired of believing it, tired of knowing it won't stop. I want so badly for this to have never happened, to have never had to have happened.

The city around me is alive. Inside the monument, grass grows. I see a stray cat sneak past the gate, and a minute later it stares down at me from the highest rafter of the destroyed building. Its gaze is inscrutable.

I leave. Sixty-seven years ago the men that ran my country ordered this city burnt to the ground, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it . . .

Except make sure nothing like it ever happens again.

-Doug