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Where it's at
Nagasaki was the first city in Japan to establish links
with the west, as early as the 16th century when Portuguese
traders and Christian missionaries were visiting Nagasaki
and influencing its culture.
What happened here?
Tragedy struck in East/West relations during WWII when one
of the greatest single event atrocities committed by the west
occurred, and dramatically closed the War.
On 9 August 1945, an American air force bomber unloaded a
four and a half ton atomic bomb on Northern Nagasaki, killing
a third of the civilian population immediately and another
third were injured and later died from painful and crippling
diseases caused by radioactive poisoning. As the bomb exploded
1500 ft in the air and in the suburbs, the death toll was
much lower than the atomic attack on Hiroshima.
Now, a black stone monolith marks the place of the explosion.
The fire ball created by the bomb was 1000°C hotter than
the surface of the sun, which reduced the area surrounding
the bomb to a barren ground of only burnt rubble. It was thought
that most of the city would be barren of vegetation for nearly
a century, but science was proved wrong and now the area is
green and leafy, covering over the destruction of its recent
history.
Nagasaki was not the target of the B-29 carried bomb, the
city of Kokura was the main target, but its course
was abandoned due to smoke cover and so the fate of Nagasaki
was sealed.
Visiting Nagasaki today
Since the War, Nagasaki has become a focal centre for peace
campaigns, and people from all over the world come to
show solidarity to the people of Nagasaki and visit its Peace
Museum. Many symbolic sculptures have been donated by
nations around the world as an expression of peace to Nagasaki,
from the Constellation Earth given by Nagasaki's sister town
of St Paul, Minnesota, USA and the 'Monument of Peoples Friendship'
given by the GDR. The city has been completely rebuilt, and
it is difficult to believe when looking on the surface of
the city that these unthinkable atrocities actually occurred
in this peaceful and innocent place.
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