Just like in Hiroshima, shadows were etched onto the sides of buildings. Skin was burnt off of bodies. Glass bottles melted into deformed shapes. Entire buildings of brick, mortar, and concrete collapsed. Hiroshima was fenced in by its mountain ranges; Nagasaki has some mountains but is more of an open port city. So geologically they were different "test surfaces." I am not going to try to compare the death and destruction, however. I'll leave that to more ghoulish sorts than I.
I went to Hiroshima for the first time in 1983. I did not get to Nagasaki until about seven years later. By that point I felt a huge affection for Hiroshima, and I was also a bit jaded. I knew the destruction already. So I wasn't all that keen on going to the Nagasaki Peace Park. In fact, the first time I went I visited my buddy David and I don't think we *did* go to the Park.
However, I eventually did go. There is no Atomic Dome to be the symbol of the city like there is in Hiroshima, so they use the Peace statue. Also, they have the Urakami Cathedral (shown above). Nagasaki had been the only city open to foreigners when Japan was going through its "closed" period (for, oh, 500 or so years) so this is the only city in Japan that had any foreign presence at all. The Urakami Cathedral was one of the oldest built in Japan.

Nagasaki is on the upper-Northern most point of the island of Kyushu, which is where I lived for 14 years. The city itself is a bus or train ride away from where I lived in Miyazaki. "Kyushu" is a region of Japan similar to how "New England" and "the Mid-West" are regions in the US. So because I consider myself a "Kyushu Boy" I have a strong affinity for Nagasaki. It's only made stronger because I already considered myself as a native of Hiroshima.
"No More Hiroshimas!" indeed....
No comments:
Post a Comment