Hiroshima – The Water
Water connects all things, life to death, darkness to light.
In Hiroshima, the water is a constant presence.
The city is crossed by rivers. Those same rivers where people poured themselves into in order to try to escape the flames and seek relief for their burnings.
We read the story of a young man trying to carry her injured mum from the other side of the river swimming. The woman died on his back while he was swimming.
The rivers were full of corpses. When today I look at the river, that’s the only thing I can think of. The corpses in the river.
Then, there is the black rain. The thick black rain that fell from the sky after the bomb.
Many people were dirty and they opened their mouth to swallow the rain, not knowing it was radioactive.
This is why in the prayer space of the memorial to the victim there is water inside. The monument has the shape of a clock that stopped at 8.15 and it is surrounded by running water in memory of the dirst of the victims.
