Culture

Navigator: The Other Hiroshima Story

“Carp Boya (boy),” a mascot character for the homegrown baseball club, Hiroshima Toyo Carp, is on display in a poster announcing the sale of official goods at a convenience store near the team’s home stadium in Hiroshima, western Japan.Mari Yamaguchi/AP

Hiroshima is an intentionally serene city. At its heart lies the Peace Memorial Park, a sprawling, multi-faceted monument to the 140,000 lives taken by the atomic bomb that America dropped there, along a branch of the Ōta River, in 1945. Today, the site includes a Peace Memorial museum housing numerous stories of horror, loss, and unspeakable suffering that lasted for generations.

When I visited last week, I shuffled along with other tourists from one display to the next in heavy silence. But there, among the exhibits detailing the reconstruction of Hiroshima, I spotted a plaque that told a lesser-known story about the city. It noted the origins of its much-beloved baseball team: