August 9th

(statues from Urakami Cathedral, slightly burned but relatively undamaged)

Suddenly there was a blinding flash of light; an awful brightness but no noise. Nervously, Chimoto-san raised his head. "A bomb! It's at Urakami." And in the area above the church he saw an enormous column of smoke float upward, swelling rapidly as it rose. But what struck terror into his heart was the huge blast of air like a hurricane that rushed toward him. It came from under the white smoke and rolled over the hills and fields with terrifying speed and power. Houses and trees and everything else collapsed before it.... Then a deafening noise struck his ears and he was thrown into the air and hurled five meters against a brick wall. Finally he opened his eyes and looked around. The trees were torn from their roots. There were no branches, no leaves, no grass. Everything had vanished. All that remained was the smell of resin.

(taken from The Bells of Nagasaki by Dr. Takashi Nagai)

Three days after "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima, another bomb- codenamed "Fat Man" - was dropped on Nagasaki, a port city in the Kyushu region of Japan. Historically, it was the site of Christian martyrdoms and foreign trade. As of 11:02 AM in August 1945, it was a conflagration of flame, heat, carbon and death.

(a view of Nagasaki train station from the sky-walk)

(old Oura Church built in the French style)



(a view from Chinatown)

Now, it is a charming port city that balances East and West like no other city in Japan. This could not have occurred unless there was peace and peace could not have been achieved without a weapon of mass destruction.

(a bust of Dr. Takashi Nagai at Nyoko-do, a museum and hermitage dedicated to him)

Dr. Takashi Nagai, a resident of Nagasaki and a Catholic convert, wrote his experiences of that in The Bells of Nagasaki. He laces the account with a keen insight into the total destruction and what started it. From that event to the rise of Nagasaki, a city no longer a part of the Japanese militaristic war machine that nearly destroyed the country.

(the brick casing for the bells of Urakami Church. The force of the blast flung it far from the epicentre)

(all that remains of the original Urakami Church. It was built by Christian converts.)

(Urakami Cathedral)

It was not the atomic bomb that gouged this huge hole in the Urakami basin. We dug it ourselves to the rhythm of military marches.

(taken from A Hill in Bloom by Dr. Takashi Nagai)

Who turned the beautiful city of Nagasaki into a heap of ashes? ...We did. We started the foolish war ourselves. (taken from A Hill in Bloom)