Nagasaki Peace Park or Heiwa Koen//EP 29//
Welcome back. Today we’re going to visit a very iconic location, one of historical significance. This is Nagasaki Peace Park. There’s lots to see, lots to learn about. Let’s get started. Well, here we are at the top of the escalator. famous statue of the piece the guy sitting with his hands like that he’s pointing to the sky and saying remember don’t forget what happened here and the other one is representing peace the other hand so just kind of take it all in various statues that were donated to this park from various countries promoting the concept of peace in the state of the world today. I think it’s kind of important that we remember that we went through some hard times and that we came out the other side, but that the price is steep. Wow. something you doing there. This is the hypo center. The bomb was dropped directly and uh exploded directly above this point here. But over here to our right, we see the remains of what was left of the buildings that were in the area. This is the ground level at the time of the atomic bombing, which was right here. This was the ground level. But let’s go over here because I want to show you. I’m going to share a quick story with you. My father-in-law was 13 years old at the time of the bomb dropping. And um as the story goes as he told it to my daughters um him and his mother and I don’t know if there was other people with him they had to leave the city of Nagasaki and go to another city to visit family so that they might be able to get some some vegetables to eat because there was no food in the city at that time. things were really tough, was harsh and uh so they went out there to get that vegetables and on the way back the train stopped on the tracks. It was the day the bomb went off. They didn’t know though what had happened. The reason the train stopped is because the tracks were completely destroyed. They stayed there the night with the train. The next day they walked into the city. My father-in-law as a 13-year-old witnessed an apocalyptic site in his town, the city of Nagasaki. He walked through it and he actually walked through this area up there and down here in this very canal where we were standing and walking. He related to my daughters that there was so many bodies piled up down here. This is where they put the people who had deceased and passed away. And they were piled up down here. Just huge piles of bodies everywhere. And uh now you can imagine, I’m not here to debate the pros and cons, the necessities, or the cruelties of the bomb. That’s for a whole different discussion another day. But you can imagine the effects of that event and those scenes which he saw that were then imprinted upon him for the rest of his life. Um my father-in-law had his faults like all of us do but he had to live with that for the rest of his days and he lived to a ripe old age. Passed away a few years back. Matter of fact, he’s listed on the bomb museum’s walls and in the registry as a bomb victim because we don’t know what effects the radiation from that bomb had on people. So, anybody that was in the area was automatically upon death considered a victim of that bomb. But for his whole life, he used to tell my daughters that his drinking was his way of coping basically with the images that will flash through his head throughout his life into the evenings and whatnot. So he used to call he’d say, “This is gan noi. It’s it’s my medicine, grandpa’s medicine for forgetting those things.” So, uh, no one could blame him for his drinking. U, but nonetheless, the effects of that event, seeing these bodies in here piled up, uh, must have been a horrific thing to live with for his whole life. Like I said, he was 13 years old when it happened and he lived way up into, you know, 80 something. So, um, some things to consider. War does not just affect those who are fighting it. It also affects those who are involved and around it. And uh that’s why these big banners are here to remember those people that passed away here in this area and then were dumped in here. We’ll just walk down here with a little bit of silence with the sound of the water. On August 9th, 1945, at 11:02 a.m. local time, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, nicknamed Fat Man, on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. 3 days after the bombing of Hiroshima, the B29 bomber, Boxcar, piloted by Major Charles Sweeney, had originally intended to bomb Kokura. See episode 26 for more information on Kokura. But heavy cloud cover and haze obscured the primary target. Low on fuel, the crew diverted to their secondary target, Nagasaki. A last second break in the clouds allowed the bombadier to visually target the city’s industrial valley where the bomb was released. The Fat Man bomb detonated with a force of about 21 kilotons of TNT and killed an estimated 40,000 people instantly with tens of thousands more dying in the following weeks and months from injuries and radiation poisoning. The bombing of Nagasaki along with the Soviet Union’s declaration of war on Japan that same day led the Japanese government to announce its intention to surrender the following day on August 10th, 1945. That should have been Boy, ally to Maybe we can end here with a moment of silence. Until next time, John A.
A short visit to the Nagasaki Peace Park and the Bomb Museum Remembrance Hall. Also I share a family history about the location.
AloJapan.com