The first three days of being in Tokyo included one day in Kamakura viewing several shrines and the Big Buddha statue, eating sushi by the boat, seeing electric lights in Shinjuku, and mastering the subway and rail system… Any surprises about Japan? For the many people in the Tokyo metropolitan area (35 million, 2005 estimate), it has some interesting characteristics: Cleanest city that I have ever seen; best public transportation system; quiet city; smoking is not overpowering, even though most people smoke; and English is tough to come by……
After enjoying our time in Tokyo, we took the bullet train on a 9-hour journey to Nagasaki, which is located at the southern end of the island nation. The city has 360,000 people and is situated along the ocean with mountains and rolling hills. It’s a beautiful place! However, this city has a harsh history with being the second location where the United States of America dropped an Atomic Bomb. At 11:02 AM on August 9, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki by the USA resulting in catastrophic damage to the city infrastructure and loss of over 140,000 people (70,000 at time of blast). A memorial, museum, and Peace Park provide a sad, demoralizing look into the impact of war and use of nuclear weapons on mankind.
We also visited Hiroshima later in the week, which is the location of the first Atomic Bomb. On August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m., the USA dropped the first Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima wiping out kilometers of the city and killing over 240,000 people (140,000 people at time of blast). Again, walking through the museum and reading the material about the reasons for the bombing, the nuclear arms race between the USA, USSR, and later joined by France, India, United Kingdom, China, Pakistan, and most recently the testing by North Korea. It is sad to also say that the USA recently conducted a nuclear test in Nevada during August 2006 (This testing, along with all other nuclear tests have been protested by the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Letter to George Bush http://www1.city.nagasaki.nagasaki.jp/abm/abm_e/kougi/usa_e.html ).
While visiting these memorials, all I could think of was that the USA killed all of these innocent people and it made me really sad to know that my country forced the development of these memorials and museums. I also wondered if our President, George W. Bush or other US political representatives had visited either of these former A-BOMB sites, or maybe the Occupational Museum in Latvia, or the war museum in Laos, or I might even add the Vietnam or Korean Memorials in Washington D.C……..My answer to this question is “if you are a person with values and morals and have visited any of these memorials than I would think that you would never enter a war, drop a bomb, or look to kill men or women…….”
http://www1.city.nagasaki.nagasaki.jp/abm/abm_e/index.html
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