Hiroshima Remembered

Beginnings: Small collage 8"x8"

Every year, on August 6th, tears fall at Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima where the victims of the world's first atomic-bomb attack, unleashed upon the Japanese city during World War II, are remembered. The United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. An estimated 70,000 people died instantly. It is estimated that 140,000 died on that day and in the months that followed.

Shuudoushi monk at the Kiyomizudera Temple in Kyoto, Japan.

On each anniversary thousands of people, of dozens of nationalities, gather to remember the dead and pray for peace. Called the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony and held each August 6, choirs sing, bells toll and a minute of silence is observed at 8:15am, the time the bomb fell.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park Cenotaph stands across from the Atomic Bomb Dome. The epitath reads: Rest in Peace, for the error shall not be repeated.

Doves for Peace are released at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

"The light that is hard won offers the greatest illumination. A gift wrestled from bleakness will often confer a sense of sureness and grounding in the self, a strengthening proportionate to the travail of its birth." -- John O"Donohue, from Beauty: The Invisible Embrace "The Lost Voice"

Hiroshima Bomb Dome: This is one of the few buildings that remained standing after the atomic bombing. It stands as a tribute to the courage and resilience of the Japanese people.

Monks praying for peace.

Candles and paper lanterns float on the Motoyasu River in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome, in memory of the victims.

--- Now looking through the slanting light

of the early morning window

toward the mountain presence

of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

--- David Whyte