Nagasaki: Day 25

Erin and I kind of slept in a little today since we were both tired. By a little I mean 10:15 so we weren’t too bad. After we were ready we headed to the Nagasaki A-Bomb park and museum. We took the tram and then headed up the stairs.

There were a lot of stairs, apparently the people in Nagasaki like stairs?

A view from the top of the hill.

We started walking around the park. There were tons of monuments, but unlike Hiroshima, most of them were donated by different countries.

I liked this one.
Then we found the fountain of peace.

Here is the sign.

And the actual fountain.




That is all that was left of the walls of a prison that used to stand on the hill. The entire place was blown away.

The Nagasaki peace statue.


I took a picture of the caption so that I wouldn’t have to explain the statue to you =P.

Nagasaki.

This monument is directly underneath the hypocenter of the bomb that hit Nagasaki. The story of how the bomb is dropped on Nagasaki was kind of an interesting one. You see, the original target was another city, but on the day the bomb was to be dropped it was really cloudy over that city (I forgot the name) and so the pilot went to the 2nd target, Nagasaki. It was also cloudy over Nagasaki so the pilot was about to abort the mission because he was running out of gas. Then he saw a break in the clouds and verifying the city he dropped the bomb. He didn’t actually drop it on the right target, he just arbitrarily dropped it on the city knowing that it would do enough damage either way.

A close-up of the monument.

This is part of a Catholic cathedral that was built by the people of Nagasaki. Before the bombing it was the biggest cathedral in Asia and it was filled with statues, beautiful stained glass windows and treasures. After the bombing, however, there was little left of the cathedral.

This statue is a memorial for the people in Nagasaki. At the time of the bombing most of the residents of Nagasaki were just women, children and elderly.

After the park we went to the museum. At this museum photography was not allowed, so sadly, the pictures end here. I actually kind of liked the Nagasaki museum better than the Hiroshima museum. Mostly, though, because this museum was quieter and more interactive and I guess kind of more personal too. They had a lot of the same types of stuff as Hiroshima, but there were more videos and more pictures. They also had survival stores and videos from about 30 people. Erin and I sat down and watched a few of them. Some of the stores were really sad, but amazing at the same time. The things some of these people did were incredible.

One of the stories that stuck with me the most was the story of a boy who was about 10 years old at the time of the bombing. Warning, this is a little graphic. He and his little sister were at home when the bomb went off. His house collapsed and though he was safe (besides severe burns) his little sister was trapped under a huge beam with both of her legs broken. Several different people came and tried to lift the beam off of the house. First a neighbor who tried for about half an hour and then said it was impossible. Then a group of sailors who were trying to help people, came by and tried to lift the beam. Again, they said it was impossible. Then the boy saw a bloody, purplish figure hobbling towards them. “Mother!” He cried out. His mom came to the two siblings and saw that the sister was trapped. Both crying, the mother and the boy waited for help. Another man came by and desperately tried to lift the beam off of the girl, “it is just impossible, I am so sorry”, he said. Wiping the tears from her indistinguishably burnt, bleeding face, the mother crawled under the beam, bracing her back against it, and pushed with all of her might. Somehow, the beam lifted off and the boy was able to pull his little sister out. His mother collapsed on the ground. The skin from her back had stuck to the beam and peeled off, revealing the muscle and bone below. The wound was bleeding heavily. A few moments later his mother died on that spot. The boy managed to carry his sister to the hospital, heavily burned and injured, she died a few days later. The boy was left homeless and without a family. But at least he had survived.

That is the best I could remember it, but I guess it gets the message across.

After we listened to some of the stories, we went out towards the other part of the museum and watched a video about nuclear development and testing, and how we should put a stop to it. I kind of agree, there are some things we as people shouldn’t have, and one of those things is the power to kill hundreds of thousands (or even millions, given the power of current bombs) of people at the push of a button.

On the way out of the museum there was a special exhibit with a photojournalist’s diary and pictures from Afghanistan and Iraq. I really enjoyed it because it was all photography and the images were really powerful. Some of the were just downright amazing. This was just another one of those times where I thought about changing one of my majors to Photojournalism. To be able to go places and create images like that is incredible, and it is something I would like to do. Oh well, enough of that.

After the museum we decided to go looking for food. We wandered back towards our hostel and eventually found a kaitenzushi with 110 Yen plates. We went for that and had a very good lunch at 3pm.

After that I was kind of beat and I guess Erin was too, so we headed back to the hostel. I worked on pictures and posting stuff to flickr and I guess Erin worked on pictures as well. At around 7 we ate dinner, but this time it was from Family Mart and I made us some noodles. It was a cheap alternative, which was nice.

At around 11 we went to bed I think.