Hiroshima or Nagasaki to Visit the Atomic Bomb Museum?

Hiroshima or Nagasaki to Visit the Atomic Bomb Museum?

Welcome to Tokyo on an extraordinarily hot summer afternoon in August. August 6th, this is the 80th uh anniversary, memorial of the atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima. It’s getting a lot of media attention, press. This is a very pivotal year because a lot of the survivors, the hibbaksha are are leaving us. We’re seeing um what I was told 4,000 people passing away that had survived the atomic bomb in Nagasaki every year. about 4,000 and that number is dwindling as well. So the 80th year is is a very important one and this is one where the Hibbach survivors are really voicing their opinions. More and more visitors who are coming here to Tokyo uh sorry to Japan uh want to go to Hiroshima. They want to go to Nagasaki. They want to experience um what they’ve learned in the history books to see uh what especially when it’s always in the news now uh nuclear war. they want to uh experience or understand I think is a better word what happened on those days because I know the history books I I remember going to Vietnam and then seeing the the way Vietnam framed the Vietnam the American war that blew my mind. So when when visitors come to Japan it’s really interesting to go and see the peace museum the atomic bomb museum is what it’s called in Nagasaki and and learn about this. It really is a fascinating uh subject. It’s a uh from our grand my grandfather’s time, some of you your great-grandfather’s time, the decisions that they had to make. And the country that Japan was 80 years ago is absolutely not the same country that it was that it is today. We’ll talk about that as well. But, you know, if you have to ask me 1 minute and 40 seconds into this video, Hiroshima or Nagasaki uh for visiting to learn about um the atomic bombing, it’s I used to live in Hiroshima. I’m biased. I love Hiroshima, but I’ve been there maybe four or five times over the last two, three years, and every time has been extraordinarily crowded. Uh, this is an image from about a about a year ago. You can see the Peace Museum has a line that was about I think it was like 3 hours long. That’s not fun, folks. And I I I don’t know how they’re doing it now, but that’s a really long line to go in and see uh the museum. It used to be 50 yen to enter. You never had to wait in line for it, but I’m going to place again. But these days, you have to wait in line for everything in Japan. Over tourism is a problem. Again, I lived in Hiroshima uh 20 years ago, 25 years ago when I was there from 1999, you would just walk right in the museum. It was almost always empty. And now there’s so many people. I think this is also a result of um uh Nihon Hidango winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe there’s more attention on this. The Hibbaka, the survivors themselves are telling their stories a lot better than they did 25 years ago because of the stigma. If if you admitted that you were a hibbaka, it was harder to get married. It was harder to get a job. So people didn’t admit it. They lived with this trying to hide it from everybody including their spouses, including their partners cuz uh people wouldn’t get married to those that were hibbaka because they felt they were genetically um defective. Uh and a lot of them did have children that came up with pupura, which is a a rupturing of the blood vessels as well as uh um like it it makes these purple spots on your skin as well as um leukemia and a lot of other issues that that did occur. We call them second generation survivors because this stuff goes on. This is the stuff that you’ll learn at the museums. But I I would say without a doubt, Nagasaki is so much different comparatively. This is when it first opened. I was the first one in. There wasn’t a line to get in at this time. There Nagasaki’s This is the entrance. Nagasaki is pretty much dependent on um I would say cruise ships and uh the museum no reservation needed. It’s it’s empty. It’s very well uh done. A lot of um artifacts, things that were out um was preserved, not destroyed uh or bulldozed over, which is what a lot of it was done. And you could see you have a lot more space. Uh you have a lot more peace. You can reflect more, you can absorb more. But, you know, the museum in Hiroshima is so well done. It’s hard to say. I would say dude, go go go visit both. Really, go visit both. But if you had to ask me if you only had one, Nagasaki, if this was a topic that was very important to you to to experience here in Japan, and it is for a lot of people, Nagasaki has far less tourists. And when the wave of the cruise ship is over and everybody comes at the same time and leaves at the same time, there’s like an hour and there’s a lot of days where the cruise there are no cruise ships. Nagasaki is so peaceful. It is such a beautiful city. Um I’m like looking at abandoned houses like, “Oh, maybe this is a good place to live here.” I’ll take some questions that were coming in here. Uh th this episode comes in light of an episode that I just released on uh Hold on a second. I I just updated the thumbnail. an episode that I just released um about two two hours ago. I think it’s an important episode and I made this in response to my community asking saying that you know Hiroshima gets a lot of attention but Nagasaki gets almost none and I think it was time to give Nagasaki some attention. I start off with a lot of of um old footage from 1945 from the National Archives in the United States. This is all declassified and uh royalty-free stuff that you can use from the uh national archives and was able to piece that together with um uh survivor um uh interviews as well as a tour guide who actually had a very strong connection to the past of Nagasaki. He was there when the cathedral was being rebuilt. So, I think it’s a very good video that gives you maybe the most thorough look at Nagasaki after the bombing from the point of view of those that were on the ground. And that’s what I wanted. Not so much about how the bomb was made and how it was transported and dropped, but what happened after that? What what what’s the uh um hypoenter like, what was life like? What still remains in Nagasaki? I think it’s a very uh important episode. Um so, go check that out. If the subscribers don’t like it, it usually won’t get uh suggested to the public. So, uh, if you see it, click it and watch to the end if you can, cuz that really does help, uh, uh, get this suggested, cuz on on the 9th, which is Saturday, Nagasaki has its 80th memorial. And I want this video to be something that people do reflect on cuz again, we’re losing a lot of those voices. Another reason why Nagasaki seems to have a lot less tourists, it I shouldn’t say seem to, it’s it’s kind of a fact, it’s just further away. Getting to Nagasaki, according to this, if I were to to leave um about five minutes ago from Tokyo station, it would take me uh six hours and 39 minutes, which is a lot faster than I thought. Nagasaki is now connected mostly with a Shinkansen. It’s not a complete line, but from um Fukuoka, you can jump on the brand the newest Shinkansen train and get to Nagasaki um a lot faster than you used to be able to. Now, the the train isn’t the train used to be connected by a bus. I think you can go straight through now. But the actual Shinkansen tracks are only one station, the new Nagasaki Shinkansen. The rest of it is just like an express train, which is actually quite fast. But the Shinkansen goes there um later. It’s it’s a much faster to fly, and they do have budget airlines going there, which is a lot cheaper than the Shinkansen. But if you if you compare it to um to um Nagas uh Hiroshima, hold on a second. Hiroshima is so much closer. Boom. Hiroshima is 3 hours and well actually it’s not that much closer. It’s just 2 hours difference about right. Maybe two and a half 3 hours. I’m trying to make Nagasaki look good here, aren’t I? It’s like about 3 hours closer. Two a little bit less than 3 hours. But it’s also a straight shot um from Tokyo on the Tohoku Shink Tokaido Shinkansen. It takes you I think it’s about three and a half hours. I’ve I I think if you take the Nomi, it depends. Um I think I think it’s about 3 and a half hours. Anyways, it’s a pretty good ride. It’s It seems long. I think if you’re anytime you go after 4 hours on the Shinkansen, it’s f I I always take an airplane. I feel flying makes more sense than taking the train. Uh it cost about 30,000 yen to get 32,000 yen to get the Nagasaki and about 25,000 yen to get the Hiroshima. So, the price is not that different, but it is something to think about. Nagasaki, though, will be a much different experience than Hiroshima. Go visit them both. They’re both very important um places here. Any any last questions before we end this live stream? I just wanted to make this quite brief here. I thought the Hiro Hiroshima Museum was better than Nagasaki. I don’t know if it’s I think they renovated the museum. It wasn’t that great when I first went there and about 10 years ago they renovated it. It’s it’s quite well done now. Um but I don’t I I got as much seeing the artifacts from Nagasaki as I did from seeing the artifacts from Hiroshima. If you’re looking at presentation, yeah, Hiroshima’s done a better job of it perhaps, but Nagasaki, I would say, is not that far behind in terms of the quality of the museum. you’re gonna you’re gonna see a lot of the stuff um that you’re looking for. In the episode, you saw that they had a replica of the actual bomb fat man, like the size and the shape and the color of it. It I I saw it and was like like that’s like cuz I’ve been looking at the archival video from the the army and the air force that took this in in uh 1945 for a very long time editing this video for months. And this was a, you know, to see that was really um like wow. I think they have a replica in in Hiroshima as well, but the Nagasaki bomb was 40% more powerful than Hiroshima. And there were less lives lost because of the mountains around there. But those in the hypoenter area, the fatality rate was much higher because the bomb was more intense inside of the Urkami Valley because of the geography. Like I learned a lot of stuff making that video. You should go check that out. A lot of people know about Hiroshima and don’t know about Nagasaki. That’s why I made this video. And uh yeah, I’m very working hard to try to pitch this. Ramsay Silent is in the house. Thank you, Ramsay, for previewing it and taking a quick look at it. The only thing I got wrong and it was pronouncing Marana, the northern Marana Islands instead of I said Marina. I think uh Tinian Island is in northern Marana, I think. So, it’s only one error, but like I don’t think a lot of people are going to catch that unless you live in Guam. My wife’s uncles was buddy with the captain of the plane that dropped the Nagasaki bun. Wow. Mark Mark Duffy wrote that in there. We’re all connected with history. The last thing I want to end you with is this. It’s a very significant comment here. I got some comments whenever you do something like this. It’s always it’s always those in the United States that are like, “You shouldn’t mess with the US. You shouldn’t Japan back in um my wife’s grandfather fought in the Philippines. He was dropped in there. He didn’t want to go. He was dropped in there. He was the only survivor of his battalion or platoon. I’m I’m not sure how you would say it in Japanese, but he was the only survivor and he survived out in the jungle for by himself um pillaging like food that he could find in the jungle. And when the Americans came, he he surrendered and they took him on a boat to Hiroshima not far not long after the atomic bomb. He died about five six years ago. And he talked about taking the train from Hiroshima back up to Tokyo after uh the war and his love for the Americans and the occupation. Japan was a uh country that was the citizens did not know what was going on. They only heard what they were being told. A lot of them didn’t believe it. They thought that Americans were like the devil and they were crazy, worse than the regime in in Japan. And when the occupation came and MacArthur took over, it was anything but that. And that’s why um uh there was one comment that saying like, “Oh, Japanese love Americans because they were conquered by Americans.” That’s not ex exactly true. It’s more when MacArthur came in, the troops, the people stationed here during the reconstruction were so gracious, so good, so generous uh compared to what they had before. Americans were great and they they there was a great love for the United States following uh World War II. I remember um my great uncle talking about a story. He was stationed in Hokkaido and uh he gave a simple egg to a Japanese boy and that boy was so grateful for one egg and he he he had at at that time my great uncle was not all there. So he kept repeating it and then after he finished the story he went back to the beginning like you know like a broken record and I listened to it like 10 times. Each time he told it, it was it was still pretty good. But then we had to cut him off because like he kept talking about it, but it was there were a lot of stories like that. The reconstruction of Japan and the way that MacArthur approached it is why I think um Japan became such an ally. There’s a lot of history there. Americans don’t realize this because when they come here, I I think you look at it through the prism of your own country. You have to reset things and see what Japan was actually like back then. And it wasn’t a great country. It was a It had a lot of flaws. It had a lot of problems. The emperor was powerless, overrun by the military. He was He should have done something more. He should have been stronger. I There’s a lot of stories that have come out about this that talk about it in a more historical ref uh point of view, but I’ve done a lot of research on this as well. Well, I’m no historian, an amateur, but I have a great respect for the history and knowing your past and learning from it is the best way not to repeat it. And that’s why this episode exists. My uncle had dual citizenship. He was Japanese soldier in the Philippines. He went mi. I’m sorry to hear that. Yeah, a lot of people did not make it in the Philippines. It was a tough in fact in the Pacific. A lot of Japanese knew they didn’t want to be put into this war. They were uh my my um wife’s grandfather was thrown in the war. He was 16. Just if you take a look at the Nagasaki video, um Uji Harasan, who I talked to, was 15 years old. That guy, he’s a 15year-old mobilized student. He is um uh at Isahaya station, and they send a train his way. The train is filled with uh uh victims from the atomic bombing and they ask him, “Please take care of these uh people.” The rescue train, which I only touched on briefly, carried 700 uh survivors out of the hypoenter. The train tracks were awful. They used the push mode, these steam locomotives, meaning it could go off the track and actually move and then they’d have to push it back onto the track. So to get the survivor sims went into what’s called push mode. I did not know a lot about this until last week. So, this is one of the every time I I researched this Nagasaki video, it got kept getting longer and longer with all of the details, but they ended up rescuing 2,800 people. A lot of them died. I’d say more than half from what I got from Ujihadasan. But his recollection at age 95 checked out with the history books. That train left at 1:50 p.m. from uh Michino Station in Nagasaki. And he said in the interview, I didn’t put it, that uh they told him to work from 3 pm and he worked until 900 pm with the rescue trains getting people off. And he described the smell. He described what the victims look like. He described um uh I didn’t put it in a lot of the gore, but the crematoriums, how they got rid of the bodies. There’s a lot of details here that was just really um a lot to take. So yeah, I’m kind of glad to be finished with this episode to be able to move on to another topic because this is one I think that really drains you. U but again, everyone who is supporting the channel says that this is also like one of the reasons why they do that and this is important. Hey John, writing from uh SJ California, sending all the love, man. Hoping to one day visit. Thank you so much. It’d be great to see you here. I think this is a great place to also leave a comment if you did have a family member who fought in the war or a perspective on this. I’d love to hear it. Uh be respectful. There are two sides to this and the Japanese side was horrific. The Pacific front was the worst and it is really good that the United States came out on top on this in this war of course but also before the Russians or the Soviets I should say is more exact got into the war which would have made it so much more complicated. Japan would be not be Japan today. There’s an argument to be made if um they if Japan had not surrendered when they did. It’s a lot of debate. His history is kind of fun to look back on, but it’s also something that you need to learn from and take seriously. Man, it’s it’s a it’s a rough one. And that’s why you need to go and visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima and both of them. Just just keep in mind if you do do if you do go to uh Hiroshima, you might have lines like this. uh do everything online and get there early and uh understand that uh it’s going to be crowded in there, but uh most people are pretty respectful. It’s not very expensive and it’s a worthwhile experience. The wax figures at the end were sometimes uh quite startling. And if you have time, go check uh check out this video uh today or tomorrow or this weekend. Saturday is going to be the memorial, which is Sunday morning in the United States, I believe. And uh I I really appreciate the support from all of you guys here. All right, thanks for watching. The what if questions will never been be answered. You’re absolutely right. Uh they they do declassify some documents, but most of it is already out there. It’s amazing. If you go to national archives, what the US has declassified, there are hundreds of thousands of pages, daily reports from the Pacific front. There’s so much material. Anybody could really go through it if you did the work and write a book on this topic if you became something of an expert. But there’s so much information um like a million pages. I think every every single daily report from each section of the Pacific and of the war is available to see. I don’t I didn’t see anything that was redacted anymore. So um Mr. Soul Eater 70777 2 three years ago Hiroshima Museum didn’t have so many people. Right. I took my parents there when they visited me in Tokyo and there’s just too many tourists there now. And it was uh on a weekday even the integrate intergate hotel there has too many noisy tourists there. I lived in Hiroshima. I love Hiroshima. You have to wake up in the summer like at 5:00 a.m. to really get peace and to uh be able to absorb I the thing with with the atomic um tourism I guess you could say something like this war tourism is that if there are too many tourists around it’s hard for you to reflect. It’s hard for you to listen to the silence and try to hear the voices that were once there. I used to do that when I lived in Hiroshima. I used to sit on a bench in front of the a atomic bomb dome, the Gmbbaku Dome, when I was walking back from Kembies, which was a expat bar back to my house in um Yokoawa. It’s about a 30-minute walk. And I would often sit there sometimes after taking two or three drinks. I don’t drink much anymore, if if at all, but back then, you know, you’re living in Japan, you’re an expat, Japanese culture, and I would reflect quite a bit. And it was a silence and uh that that then made me think and uh it it really does change your life when you do take a moment to reflect on stuff with alcohol or not. But the point is back then Hiroshima was a different place. The tourism has really changed uh a lot that city. Thanks so much for watching everybody. Again, leave some questions uh if you’d like or your account how how your what was your experience when you went to Nagasaki or Hiroshima at to the museum so others can uh learn from your own experience. Thanks, guys. Don’t sugarcoat it. I I don’t really do much of that. Do I? Not so much lately. All right, take care. I’ll see you. Matan, you know what to do. Go check out the video. I appreciate it, guys. Go get a cold iced coffee right now.

Hiroshima was my home for 2 years and I live it but lately, it’s suffering from over tourism.
I visited Nagasaki woce this year and — there’s a huge contrast. More visitors to Japan, tourists want to experience the city’s modern past through its museums. If I had to choose

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