DAY 20 - A SOMBRE DAY IN NAGASAKI - MONDAY 16 MAY

First stop, the Nagasaki Museum

for Japanese art,

porcelain of course,

interesting curios,
 

more examples of old, traditional roof tiles

armour and helmets

and folded paper cranes.  There's a monument in Hiroshima to a girl called Sadako Saski, who was 2 years old when the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. She was 2km from where the bomb exploded and, whilst most of her neighbours died, she bore no obvious injuries.  For 10 years, she was a normal, happy girl but, one day, she felt tired and dizzy.  The Red Cross Hospital found that she had leukemia, at that time, called the “A-bomb disease”.  A friend visited her in hospital and brought some origami (folding paper) and told Sadako a legend: the crane, treated as a sacred bird in Japan, lives for a hundred years and, if a sick person folds 1,000 paper cranes, that person will soon get well.  Sadako decided to try and, after she'd folded 500, felt so much better that the doctors said she could go home; she only lasted a week before she was back in hospital but she continued folding cranes.  She died having folded 664 cranes.  Her classmates formed a paper crane club to honour her and complete the task, and word spread quickly - students from 3,100 schools and 9 countries donate money and, by 5 May 1958, almost 3 years after Sadako Saki died, enough funds had been collected to build a monument in her honour in Hiroshaima, the Children's Peace Monument. Paper cranes still arrive from all over the world to be placed under Sadako’s statue. 

And, of course, the museum commemorating the bombing at 11.02am on 9 August 1945, three days after an A-bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima.  The residents of Nagasaki consider it their duty to make sure the horrors which they experienced due to the atomic bombing are never repeated; the museum is designed in such a way that the audience can see just what effect the bomb had on the city, the reconstruction, and the lasting effects of the atomic bomb. Reproducing the state which the city was in immediately after the bombing, it opens with a clock which stopped as the sky above Nagasaki was filled by a white flash and a gigantic mushroom-shaped cloud soared up towards the blue sky, 

a replica of a sidewall of the Urakami Cathedral which was the closest large building to the hypocentre (dozens of people were inside the Cathedral for confession - half-melted rosaries were found inside),

exhibited next to a water tank with contorted legs, twisted bottles, the bones of a human hand stuck to a clump of melted glass, burnt clothing, a schoolboy's lunchbox with its contents still charred inside, and a helmet with the remains of a victim’s skull welded onto the inner surface (if that weren't ghoulish enough, there's also a  section showing damage caused by radiation and by the blast, appeals of survivors and the rescue and relief activities which were carried out), supplemented with photographs depicting daily life in Nagasaki before the atomic bomb was dropped, the devastation produced by the bomb, and the history of nuclear arms development.

"Fat Man" was the codename for the type of A-bomb dropped on Nagasaki (referring to its wide, round shape - the Hiroshima bomb was called Little Boy). A replica is exhibited, along with the rehearsal of the timeline: the original target for the bomb was the city of Kokura but it was found to be obscured by clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid nearby by 224 B-29s the previous day, covering 70% of the area over Kokura and obscuring the aiming point. Three bomb runs were made over the next 50 minutes, but the bombardier was unable to identify the target spot and was forced to proceed to the alternative target, Nagasaki. Initially it too was obscured by cloud but at the last minute, the bombardier found a hole in the clouds and the Fat Man was dropped.  After a 43-second duration free fall, it exploded at an altitude of about 1,650 feet (500m).  The bomb actually missed its intended detonation point by almost two miles and that and the more uneven terrain meant that the damage was somewhat less extensive than that in Hiroshima (35,000-40,000 people were killed outright and a total of 60,000-80,000 fatalities resulted, including from long-term health effects, most notably leukemia).

Next to the museum is the National Peace Memorial Hall for the A-bomb victims, which marks the hypocentre of the event. The memorial both contains a list of all known victims (in the volumes piled at the end of the room) and serves to remind visitors of the vast destruction and indiscriminate death caused by nuclear weapons.

At the park's north end is the 10m-tall Peace Statue created by a Japanese sculptor. Its right hand points to the threat of nuclear weapons while the extended left hand represents eternal peace. The mild face symbolises divine grace and the gently closed eyes offer a prayer for the repose of the bomb victims' souls. The folded right leg and extended left leg signify both meditation and the initiative to stand up and rescue the people of the world.