Day 8

Another hot day in Nagasaki, but overcast too. We gobbled up our free (bedavar!) breakfast of toast and jam with cold boiled eggs before setting off for the Atomic peace park (after another quick detour to reserve seats on the next train to Hiroshima). I seem to have accrued several hundred bug bites (must be the Nagasaki humidity) and either I'm turning into Popeye the sailor-man or I have a really venomous bite which has swollen on my forearm. On the way we passed by more bridal advertisements and what seemed to be a poster advertising a button which you can press to get a policeman to beat someone for you.

More extravagant dresses

This policeman looks awfully keen to use that truncheon....

The crossing lights have speakers which play the sound of a bird tweeting when the green man lights up. At first it's believable, but it quickly becomes a recognised pattern and sounds very artificial. We took the tram north to Matsuyama-machi and disembarked. Stopping to buy some (surprisingly good) tinned coffee from a vending machine, we climbed yet more flights of stairs and arrived at the peace park.


At the entrance we found the 'peace fountain', with jets of water sprayed upwards supposedly in the shape of a pair of doves' wings.

'Shashin o totte kurema senka?' Nailed it :)

Walking further along the central path we observed statues donated by various nations to represent peace (mostly mothers and children, doves, and people holding hands). At a kind of tombstone further down of the right hand side half-empty bottles of water had been left out, like flowers at a grave. I unscrewed my bottle, poured some on the drier parts of the grass, and left it beside the others. See, one of the most surprising things I learned visiting this park was that many of the victims who survived the initial blast died desperately seeking water (the flash of heat removed it from the lands and poisoned that which was further away).

A tombstone for the less fortunate ones who lived to see the wasteland which remained.

The main feature in the park, the peace statue, is a well thought out piece of art. Clever, but also kind of ugly. The right hand points to the (falling) bomb, while the left hand "points to peace" (not sure what this means). The face is closed in a benevolent prayer for the victims of war, the right leg is folded in meditation, and the left leg is poised to spring into action (to help the needy).

The peace statue at the atomic peace park, Nagasaki

Another, modern looking, piece had letters punched through it that read "Remember winter, spring's welcome consolation". I like the deliberate ambiguity of this sentence. The tone of the place was either sombre or serene, it's hard to know for sure. The wind and the noise of the fountain masked the sound of the city, except for the occasional siren, and the air smelled faintly of jasmine. There is a stillness here, and it is hard to imagine how any adult could enter this place without being moved. I am both humbled by the power of man (and science), and reminded of how much easier it is to destroy than to create.


After leaving the park we took a slight detour to investigate the Urakami cathedral. Nagasaki, being so far west, has had strong influences both from Chinese and European visitors. Some of those visitors were Christian missionaries. During the 1500s the Samurai warlords in charge (Ieyasu Tokugawa and Hideyoshi Toyotomi) outlawed Christianity for political reasons. For more than 200 years following Christians in Japan were persecuted, sometimes brutally. There was not much else of interest to be learned from the Cathedral which seems still to be in use, so we headed onwards through the atomic hypocentre park towards the atomic bomb museum.

Inside the museum I was complimented on my Japanese 'Nihon go no Jose' by the lady at the information counter. How polite (or perhaps disingenuous) when all I had said to her was Konnichiwa. We bought tickets and hired an English audio guide complete with earpiece to wear as we walked around. According to the guide, while Nagasaki was a good target (in the sense that it had a number of naval and munitions factories) the designated drop zone was focused on the commercial centre of the city. With the cloud cover so troublesome, Bockscar (the american bomber) was close to abandoning the mission and returning to base when a break in the weather appeared, and the pilot took his chance. Perhaps, had there been a little more cloud that day 150,000 lives could have been saved, and many others spared suffering. Or perhaps the mission would only have been delayed by one day, but it's hard not to wonder.

This clock stopped at the time of the blast 11:02

American bombers also dropped propaganda leaflets warning of what had happened in Hiroshima, but the Japanese claim that no leaflets were dropped until after the Nagasaki bombing. Both parties have vested interests, so it's unclear which might be true.


As well as the bomb (Fatman) the plane also dropped measuring equipment, to relay information about the scale of the blast to american bases on nearby islands. Nagasaki was a good target for another reason: it had been relatively free of bombing raids at the time, so it was a good opportunity to investigate the, still uncertain, level of devastation the bomb would cause. It seems utterly ruthless, to bomb civilians to test the power of the bomb, but this is the means by which wars are won. I'm sure president Truman was entirely sincere in his wish to defend Americans with a preemptive strike, and who knows what might have happened without the bombings?


I walked a little further inside the exhibit and school children flooded into the museum, obviously on some kind of school trip. There was much playing and laughing, and a few girls surrounded me and giggled as one of their number practiced her slightly-broken English with me. It's obviously really important for children to learn about such atrocities, but I do not think that such untarnished minds are capable of even beginning to comprehend the human agony which occurred in this place. I'm not sure I can. What is worse than the worst feeling I can imagine, based on my limited experience?


Sumiteru Taniguchi, a victim of the blast, suffered severe burns on his back and later got skin cancer. During treatment he often begged to be killed because of the pain. Katsuji Yoshida suffered flash burns across half of his face, and lived suffering discrimination for it. Though illogical, it's natural for humans to shun such ugliness. Had I to interact with such a man I would no doubt feel revulsion, though I would like to think I would stifle the feeling.

The sheer scale of this atrocity is difficult to fully appreciate, but half a day reading about it helps a little

Amidst this nightmare, Dr. Takashi Nagai is cast as a minor hero. Suffering from leukemia prior to the blast, he immediately rushed to assist victims and commence detailed studies on the bomb disease. His records are some of the earliest accurate descriptions of what happened to victims and how to treat them.



Towards the end of the exhibit the problems of the proliferation of nuclear arms is described. The U.S. and Russia both have enough nuclear warheads to destroy the world many times over. France, the U.K., and China are the next biggest culprits. Finally India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran were all highlighted as nations where nuclear tests are known or suspected to have been conducted and have not signed the NPT (non-proliferation treaty). Perhaps most troubling, it's costly and difficult to dismantle the weapons, and there are always concerns about the handling of materials.

Even with Obama and Medvedev's 'New Start' both nations will still have thousands of nuclear weapons.

The entire problem is madness. After appeals from eminent members of society like Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell to ban nuclear weapons we should not now be furnished with so many. This museum should be obsolete, but it is anything but.

Leaving the museum we had much to think about, so we headed towards the nearby sports fields to relax. There was a track and field as well as tennis courts, a baseball pitch, and an traditional archery range. Not wanting to be too distracting it was difficult to get a good shot of the archers, but I hope this will suffice:

Papparazzi!!!

Next we went in search of lunch. Though not high cuisine, we decided to try a Mos Burger (which had come recommended to me). I had a burger with some kind of bolognese/salsa inside it (not nearly as strange as I had imagined), with some 'Me-ron So-da' to wash it down.

Yum yum yum! luminous green melon drink.

After the refill we boarded the tram again and headed much further south to the more European district. There was a church and some gardens, but I was mostly uninterested in these since I've grown up seeing so much of them. The school children on their day trips were around again, however, this time filling up the souveneir shops and buying the ever popular 'Steamed Castella' (which is a cake of Portugese origin and is very tasty). Seeing nothing particularly to our liking, however, we returned to the hostel.


Later in the evening we went out to have real Japanese tempura!!! It was incredible. So light. so crispy. I also had this seaweed covered rice ball thing, oh and lot's of Asahi Super dry :) Also, since we bought quite a bit of tempura the owners were nice and brought us "Sebisu" ('Service' - free stuff!).

Wonderfully light fish tempura with seaweed coated rice ball

Well that wraps up the day's events! Sorry if you found it depressing but very nasty things happened and you should know about them!!!! Tomorrow we're off to Hiroshima and planning to visit the floating Torii at Miyajima!


Take care!