I visited Genbaku Dome in November 2024. Despite the sunny and warm weather, my mind wasn't sunny. A heavy feeling will land on you when you approach the ruins of what used to be the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotional Hall. We all know how we got the point that it's in ruins now and watching these ruins made me full of heavy thoughts. But I have to admit that still even in ruins it's quite attractive building. Opposite the Genbaku Dome on the other side of the Ota river is the Peace Bell that anyone can go to play. The sound of the bell playing over the Genbaku Dome makes the scene even more haunting.

Visit to the Genbaku Dome should also include visit to the rest of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park that is dotted with multiple different memorials to the victims of the bombing, and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, a must visit to understand the horrors of the atomic bombing. After visiting this site I was wondering that did we learn as humans anything from this terrible tragedy? Thinking of current world politics I'm quite skeptical about that. And should a memorial to a tragedy be a World Heritage Site? Well, we have historical ruins on the WH List representing the end of different empires and so did the atomic bombing end one era of Imperial Japan and changed Japan and the world permanently.