The clouds and drizzle seemed appropriate. This was our most anticipated stop on an 11-day cruise in the Sea of Japan. It turned out to be a sobering and unforgettable experience.
As we stood a hundred or so yards from where the first atomic bomb hit on Aug. 6, 1945, killing 78,100 people that day and ultimately causing many more deaths, our Japanese guide matter-of-factly acknowledged, ''It shortened the war."
A gutted riverfront building with a skeletal dome, once an industrial exhibition hall, is maintained as a visual reminder of the devastation wrought by the explosion that flattened almost every building within a mile. Across a river in the center of the city is Peace Memorial Park, a grassy area developed by Japanese philanthropies as a memorial and plea for peace and eradication of nuclear weapons.
Each year on Aug. 6, city residents and visitors fill the park, commemorating that horrific day by floating lanterns down the maze of interlocking rivers with prayers and messages, urging peace and no more Hiroshimas.
Monuments and a memorial museum in the park carefully document events of that day and their aftermath. As clusters of tourists, mostly Japanese students in uniforms, drifted from monument to monument, there were no smiles, just blank and studied expressions.
You couldn't help feeling a tinge of sorrow, and wondering what the others were thinking seeing Americans amid these tragic reminders. If there were any ill feelings, they weren't apparent.
One of the most heart-rending sights is reflected in a statue of a little girl on a tall bomb-shaped platform. Her outstretched arms hold the wings of a metal bird. The bird is a crane, the Japanese symbol of happiness and longevity.
According to the guide, the statue represents the true story of an 8-year-old schoolgirl, Sadako Sasaki, who suffered from the effects of radiation. If she could fold 1,000 colorful paper cranes, she believed, she would get well. She managed to fold 1,300 before she died of leukemia. She was 13.
Sadako was among 122,000 who died of radiation-induced cancers and other illnesses in the days, weeks, months, and years following the bombing.
Children all over Japan are familiar with this story, and each day hundreds of colorful paper cranes are deposited on a railing near the statue by visitors.
Names of all who are believed to have perished as a result of exposure to the bomb are listed and memorialized by an inverted, flower-bedecked, U-shaped sculpture and pond. Ashes of some 70,000 unidentified victims are buried in a mound nearby.
West of the monuments in adjoining two-story buildings, the Peace Memorial Museum graphically shows the bomb's impact with exhibits, videos, and explanations printed and recorded in English and Japanese.
In one recorded interview, Michiko Yamaoka says, ''I saw a very strong light, a flash. I was a half mile away from the center of the explosion. Almost instantly, I felt my face inflating. I thought I was directly hit by the bomb and was dying. . . . Shortly after, I felt my body flying in the air and then I lost consciousness. When I came to, I was in the dark under a stack of broken bricks. . . . My hair was burned, my face inflated like a balloon. I wondered why my shirt had been burnt and [was] hanging around my arms. I soon realized it wasn't my shirt but pieces of skin hanging from my arms. I saw people looking for water, and they died soon after they drank it."
Yamaoka was one of 25 severely burned and disfigured young women brought to the United States for treatment in the 1950s.
''I had many operations over one and a half years in New York," she says. ''I was hosted by seven different American families. I found out there was no official financial support. The project was supported by the good will of many American families."
For 30 years, she says, she couldn't talk about what she went through. Now, she accepts invitations to tell her story to Japanese student groups, and occasionally lectures at the museum.
One exhibit, called ''Lessons of History," touches on Japan's culpability in bringing on the punishing World War II strike.
''We must never forget that nuclear weapons are the fruits of war," an inscription reads. ''Japan, too, with colonization policies and wars of aggression inflicted incalculable, irreversible harm on the peoples of many countries. We must reflect on war and the causes of war, not just nuclear weapons."
Hiroshima today is a bustling island seaport with 1 million residents, more than double the number when the bomb hit. It has six rivers with more than 100 bridges, large downtown shopping and entertainment areas, a half dozen universities, and one of the nation's best soccer teams.
We left the city with a warm feeling after brief encounters with two residents. The first came in a large underground shopping mall. Aware we were lost while looking for a bank, a middle-aged woman graciously led us around a maze of shops and upstairs to a bank.
After we converted some traveler's checks into Japanese currency, a young assistant manager overheard me asking where we might find an Internet cafe. The man, who did not speak English, motioned toward an exit, and we followed him outside, across the street, and for four blocks, dodging raindrops, before reaching a huge electronics appliance store. Downstairs was an Internet cafe.
A smiling nod and handshake was how he said sayonara.
Si Liberman is a freelance writer in Florida. 
