Our Los Alamos Historical Museum team headed to Kyoto Station April 1 for travel to Hiroshima. After a two-hour ride on the shinkansen (bullet train), we arrived in the late afternoon.

On Saturday, April 2, our first full day in Hiroshima, we met with Kotaro Kikuchi. He is the nephew of Ikuko and Davis Begay, residents of Albuquerque. Davis Begay, a native New Mexican, is the Honorary Consul General for Japan, and his wife Ikuko is originally from Hiroshima.

Kikuchi drove us around Hiroshima playing Hawaiian ukelele music, and treated us to a gourmet lunch at a seaside restaurant. Over lunch Kotaro, a Hiroshima native, told us about living in downtown Albuquerque for a year, where he first learned to make sushi working at a Japanese Kitchen!

We then headed by ferry to Miyajima island, off the coast of Hiroshima, where a bright orange Torii gate stands among the waves. While there, we wandered around and saw many shrines (Miyajima translates to “Shrine Island”), busy shops, and friendly (sometimes map-eating) deer.

Monday, April 4, we spent the day at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (HPMM). First we met with Director Kenji Shiga and the outreach staff, and we shared our respective museum goals. Like our museum, HPMM is presently experiencing extensive renovation and exhibit redesign.

We were very fortunate to receive a behind-the-scenes tour of their new and not yet completed exhibitions. We were happily surprised that they were so willing to share with us something that is not yet open to the public. In fact, their staff confided in us that they too were surprised Director Shiga invited us to see it.

Another fortunate event was lunch, where we experienced the spring ritual hanami with a bento box picnic under the cherry blossoms. We shared laughter and casual conversation among colleagues including sharing with each other pictures of our dogs that we had on our phones. 

It seems quite possible that our goals to develop a museum-to-museum relationship are already in progress. After lunch we were guided through the park by Hiroshima Peace Volunteer Ken Harada. He shared with us that HPMM has more than 200 volunteer tour guides who receive seven months of training and give tours in dozens of languages.

At the end of the day, we were given a personal testimony by Keiko Ogura, a hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor), about her experience as an eight year old in Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945.