41 Monument to Tamiki Hara
Completed : November 15, 1951
Established by : The Tamiki Hara Committee (The Japan Pen Club and the Hiroshima Literature Association)
At the age of 40, poet Tamiki Hara experienced the atomic bombing at his birth home in Nobori-cho. His beloved wife had died the previous year. Haunted by loneliness and despair, he nevertheless determined that his mission as a survivor was to continually write works that would convey the disaster of the bombing.
However, when the expansion of the Korean War led President Truman to publicly consider the use of atomic weapons, Hara lost all hope. He took his life, lying down on the tracks of Tokyo's Chuo Line on March 13, 1951. He was 46 years old.
In November of the year of his death, writers and literary scholars who had been close to Hara built this monument engraved with a poem against the background of a stone wall from the remains of Hiroshima Castle. Sadly, heartless people pelted it with stones, denting the plate. The copper plate on the rear side was stolen. The present monument was restored and moved on July 29, 1967.
Engraved on the plate of black granite is the following poem by Hara:
Engraved in stone long ago,
Lost in the shifting sand,
In the midst of a crumbling world,
The vision of one flower.
