Nagasaki trip

February 24th, 2007, sunny

Most of you know that you have to go to the atomic bomb museum when you visit Nagasaki. But do you know Nagasaki is also famous for castela cakes? Anyways, the cakes have nothing to do with the fact that I decided to visit Nagasaki this particular weekend.

The Chinatown in Nagasaki every year holds a latern festival very much like the ones in Taiwan. So, the latern festival was the reason I decided to visit Nagasaki this weekend.

Here is a shot of the museum outside. As expected, visitors are not allowed to take any photos of the exhibition hall. I will try my best to describe what I saw then.

Just right by the entrance, there are displays of thousands of cranes folded by students from all over Japan. They wish and pray for peace on earth.

Inside the exhibtion hall, there were many images with thorough explanation of the effects and aftermath of the bomb though. Besides the things I already know about the effects of a-bomb and radition, like there would be black rain after the bombing, and most people and lands would be destroyed immediately, I was really amazed by how big the area effected by the bomb was. There was a before and after birds-eye view photo of Nagasaki city, and I am not exzaggerating, the before picture just looked as if a developed city, but the after was just an image of a flat deserted land.

Needless to say, the images of the victims were really heartbreaking to look at. People at the time were , if not serverely burnt, then were burned to black and partly ashes... Survivors suffered extreme physical pains and mental trama. I could only sympathise; could not comprehend. Another thing that was really scary was the bomb melted pretty much everything, even things as far as 2km away. In the exhition room, there were countless items melted and fused together, such as a glass bottle fused into cement, and human skull melted in a helmet.

I will stop with the horror imaging here. If you are interested to see more and read more about it, you can google nagasaki atomic bomb museum.

After the museum, Matt and I went to the bombing site. You can see from this picture below, the ground level literally dropped a few feel below (almost as tall as my shoulders) after the bombing.

Here is a picture of me and the statue built on the hypocentre (epicentre). About 140,000 people died because of the bombing. This was about half of the population at Nagasaki at the time.

You can tell from my facial expression that I felt for the victims, and also the sun was shining into my eyes....

This is a statue built in Peace park to promote peace on earth. In the park, there are also many other statues donated by other countries to avocate peace.

Yes, I know this picture is cheesy, but I don't know if it is ok to smile in front of these serious statues....
I visited Pearl Harbour in Hawaii a few years ago. Now here I am, in Nagasaki visiting the atomic bombing memorial. Innocent people were definitely the victim, but who is to judge what is right and what is wrong at war?