This entry is going to be a little different from those that precede it: I’m going to try to write it ‘thematically’ rather than chronologically. Alan de Botton, in his book The Art of Travel, talks about how if we were going to travel in a structured fashion, we would be traversing the world from one sight to the next in order to be able to make informed comparisons. I can’t remember the example he gives. If anyone can post it here, then that would be good. Let’s see how this goes.

To be honest, I hadn’t meant to go on an ‘atomic bomb tour’: things just turned out in a way that meant that I went first to Nagasaki (on pretty much the most south-western point of the four ‘main’ Japanese islands) and then to Hiroshima. My time in Hiroshima was accompanied by slushy snow which fell thickly and then turned to rain, which made the snow slushier, combined with bitterly cold winds coming off the Sea of Japan. This rather limited how much I could do; however I don’t think Hiroshima is as interesting a city as Nagasaki.

Nagasaki

Nagasaki is renowned not only for being the site of the explosion of the second atomic bomb which ended the war in the Pacific on the morning of 9th August 1945. It was founded in 1500, and became a base for Portuguese colonialists soon after; this resulted in it becoming the only area of Japan at that time where Europeans were allowed to settle and trade.

The colonialists were accompanied by missionaries (mostly Jesuits), who succeeded in converting some of the local population. As a result, 6% of Catholics in Japan live in or around Nagasaki today (Nagasaki accounts for only 0.35% of the total Japanese population).

In 1597, worried by their hold over his people, the ruler of Japan, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, ordered that twenty-six missionaries be killed because he feared their influence over his people. Nearly all of these men were Japanese-born, and they were crucified at Nagasaki on 5th February 1597. In the universal calendar they are referred to as “St Paul Miki and Companions”, although here in Japan, people prefer to refer to them as “The 26 Martyrs of Japan”.

Earthquake!

Just as I’m drifting off to sleep on my first night in Nagasaki (I didn’t arrive from Kyoto until the late evening), I hear my bed creaking. Suddenly, I have the sense that someone has come into my room and is trying to rouse me — entirely irrational: I’d double-locked and bolted the door. I look up, and see no one there. And yet, the bed continues to shake. I hear something fall down in the bathroom.

Suddenly it occurs to me that this must be a minor earthquake. I’d read that there is on average an earthquake somewhere in Japan once every day, so it wasn’t a major surprise. You’re supposed to cower under a table in case the ceiling starts to fall in, and looking around I notice that I’d piled things under the desk, thus inhibiting that path to safety.

Well, it was all over in about 45 seconds or so, and no one mentioned a thing the following morning. I know I didn’t imagine it, but looking on the Web I can’t find any reference to an earthquake at that location. It does, however, seem that most seismological reporting stations which publish their data to the Web only give information about earthquakes outside the USA which register above 4 on the Richter scale. This was only a baby tremor, and so wouldn’t have registered nearly that high. The only possible explanation I can come up with, therefore, is that it was an earthquake. Perhaps someone was having “the hotel moved a bit to the left”? Name that reference.

Of course, if you’re from San Francisco or somewhere, then you’re probably wondering what all the fuss is about.

The Atomic Bomb

At 11.02am on 9th August 1945, the American B-29 bomber ‘Bock’s Car’ dropped its load, a plutonium bomb ‘Fat Man’ (or, according to some, ‘Fat Boy’), over Nagasaki. The bomb exploded 500m above the ground, leaving an area of death and destruction over an area with a radius of some three miles or so. There is a notice in several languages in the Peace Park today which details the results of the bombing, and which I photographed. The hypocentre of the blast was some 500m from the open door of Urakami Cathedral: the people waiting for Confession inside were pulverised almost immediately, leaving only the melted remains of their glass rosaries behind among the rubble.

Peace Park

I couldn’t help feeling, possibly slightly more in Hiroshima than Nagasaki, that the word “peace” has been hijacked somewhat as a buzzword for many monuments and memorials of the dreadful bombings in August 1945. There is much ‘worthy’ reference to ‘peace’, although I felt that often these injunctions to peace were somewhat ill backed-up, with apparently little thought of the complications of the demands laid down at these monuments.

Anyway, I spent a pleasant time walking through the ‘Peace Park’ in Nagasaki. The weather was sunny, and whilst cold, the wind wasn’t blowing too strongly. There is a fountain in a V-shape (the shape is apparently representative of a dove of peace). There are also many sculptures and statues donated to the city of Nagasaki by countries and peoples from all over the world.

I found it particularly interesting that there was nothing given by any government of the Allied Powers — instead, the sculptures appeared to be largely from the Soviet Union and its Communist satellite states (as they then were). There was one given by Nagasaki’s twin town, St Paul in Minnesota, but as I say, I could find nothing given by the Allied governments. Perhaps I just didn’t see them. Perhaps they were never given. Perhaps they were never put on display.

The focal-point of the park is the enormous Peace Statue, which shows a man (clearly Japanese), pointing to the sky with one hand (to demonstrate the origin of the bomb) and with the other extended to hold back the forces of evil. The Rough Guide to Japan quotes Kazuo Ishiguro in A Pale View of the Hills saying that the statue can resemble “a policeman conducting traffic”. While that’s probably true, the statue is nevertheless an impressive sight.

Atomic Bomb Hypocentre

The hypocentre of the atomic explosion is separate from the Peace Park: it is marked with a sole black pillar, where some people evidently continue to lay wreaths. This is set in a large, clear square.

One of the only other monuments of note in the very near vicinity is the remnant of the wall of the original Urakami cathedral which was left standing after the blast. This has been moved so that it is right next to the hypocentre pillar — the cathedral was never that close to the blast. They have reinforced the wall so that it might continue to stand.

Also in the hypocentre square, there is a demonstration of the difference in the ground level today and at the time of the bombing. The ground level is now so much higher because of the amount of rubble that was left by the blast, which has been compacted to form the new ground.

The Atomic Bomb Museum

I dutifully went around the atomic bomb museum, and was gratified that it proved to be so much more interesting than I’d feared. Both this museum and the one in Hiroshima (which was arguably better) had very little by way of ‘blame’ for the injustice of the atomic bombings, but by the same measure, in line with Japanese tendencies to this very day, they don’t even acknowledge the atrocities they carried out during the first four decades of the 20th Century.

Some of the most interesting things I saw in the museum were the things found around the site of Urakami cathedral — the rosaries, parts of statues, and other devotional objects which were left after their owners were instantly vaporised by the blast of the bomb. There was a full-scale model of the bomb (you could see why it was called “fat man”), accompanied by explanations of the technicalities of atomic warfare.

Most horrific of all were the detailed eyewitness accounts. Not everyone was killed in the blast outside the central 4km radius, and thousands of survivors have left descriptions of what they felt, saw and heard on that fateful day. Some of these accounts had been left by young children who had watched their parents die of exhaustion in the effort to save them, their burnt skin peeling away from their limbs on contact with anything.

All of these descriptions of the hideousness of the bombing on innocent civilians can only support the arguments against the atomic bombings given by many people to the American military leadership before the bombings were carried out. Some advocated that a warning should be given to the Japanese before they took place, so that they could have had a chance to evacuate the cities that were potential targets (the list of potential targets was very elastic: Nagasaki had been one of the first choices of the target committee, but had been removed for the final draft of the list; the reason it was bombed was that the primary target, Kokura, was covered in cloud, and ‘Bock’s Car’ was dangerously low on fuel). Others, such as the nuclear physicist Edward Teller, suggested that the Japanese could be made aware of the destructive power of the atomic bombs without unnecessary loss of life.

Catholic Nagasaki

Urakami Cathedral

Urakami cathedral has been rebuilt to the same design as the building that was destroyed in the bombing, although I understand that it is slightly smaller. This was in fact the first site I visited in Nagasaki: I went in to find a man sitting by the main door of the church. He assured me that no ticket was required, and was also able to give me the times of Mass the next day.

The sun was streaming through the stained glass, and the whole church was decidedly blue. Just as I was taking these photos, another man came up to me to ask me what I was doing (!) and to tell me that they don’t actually allow photography inside the church. He was entirely gracious, and asked me if I would like to see their new lady chapel with the old head of the statue of the Immaculate Conception.

He took me through a door to show me the chapel, which was completed just last year. It houses the head of the statue of the Immaculate Conception which was found in the rubble of the old church, together with a new reproduction of the statue. He told me the story of the recovery of the statue’s head — a young man heard of the bombing of Nagasaki, and returned to his home town. He discovered the head of the statue in the rubble of his church, and took it with him. He went off to become a Trappist monk, and kept the head in his cell for some 15 years or so. Eventually he returned it and presented it to the Bishop for conservation in the cathedral. That monk died only a few years ago. Mass is held every morning in the chapel. (If you’re wondering how I got photos of the chapel, my guide said that it was quite all right to take them from outside the doorway, just not from inside the chapel itself!)

Outside the chapel, in the new extension of the church, there were stained-glass windows depicting the destroyed church, as well as a model of the old church.

Mass the following morning was pretty impressive, although I couldn’t understand a word of the Japanese. It was said by a priest (not the Bishop) with three concelebrants. Before, during, and after Mass the church was as quiet as it should be, although it was almost completely full. Nearly all the women were wearing mantillas, and the congregation joined in with gusto with Mass VIII (Missa de angelis) and the hymns. I was impressed that in their hymn books, they had the Greek and Latin of the Mass setting set out in usual fashion, with a Japanese transliteration underneath it. At the end, they sang Immaculate Mary: while I couldn’t decipher the verses, I seemed to be inspired to read the Japanese for the ‘Ave Maria!‘ of the refrain.

St Paul Miki & Companions

There is one major monument to the 26 Japanese Martyrs, which is very close to the railway station. Connected with this, there is a museum which gives information about the martyrs, as well as a more general (and interesting) history of Christianity in Japan, and also a memorial church. This is a profoundly ugly building, and so I haven’t even published a photograph of it on the site (however, there is one of the inside).

One of the most interesting things I saw in the museum was the Missal used by John Paul II when he came to Nagasaki. This has the words of the Japanese Mass written out in roman script for use by the Pope; underneath are printed the Latin words of which the Japanese is a translation. Unfortunately, the Missal has been kept under strong fluorescent light, which has caused the text printed in red on the open page to fade. Before you start making accusations, I didn’t use a flash when I photographed the book, which would have increased the decay of the print.

Oura Church & Domus Orationis

Oura church is the oldest Catholic church in Japan. Built by a French priest in 1864, it is located in the European quarter of the city, and was intended for the use by the European colonials living in that area. The priest was quite surprised when, soon after moving in, a group of Japanese came to him and, seeing the statues of Our Lady, said to him, “Your religion is the same as ours.” They were secret Japanese Catholics, who had kept the faith for two centuries.

Unfortunately now, the church seems to be little more than a tourist sight. You have to pay to get in, and there is piped commentary (solely in Japanese) blaring through the speakers inside the church. There isn’t actually very much to see inside the church (again, you’re not allowed to take photographs, although there are actually explicit signs to that effect here, unlike at the cathedral), and I’m not quite sure why all those people bothered paying the entrance fee.

The ‘Domus Orationis’ is a church just outside the Oura church. At first it looks enormous, with two large spires signalling its presence. However, there is a large shopping centre and food court in its basement! In fact, the inside of the church proper is a fairly small attic space. This isn’t mentioned in the guide book or any of the tourist literature: I can only assume therefore that it’s now merely the local parish church (which of course they wouldn’t bother to put on the tourist maps).

Nagasaki, Japan’s Gateway to the World

What remains of the European quarter has been remarkably well preserved. I spent an enjoyable Sunday afternoon wandering through Glover Garden, which is where several colonial houses have been maintained: visitors are able to go through the houses, which are laid out in the contemporary style.

Visitors to Glover Garden start at the top of the hill, and the suggested route past all of the houses works its way down until — surprise, surprise — you’re at the bottom again. They have outdoor escalators to get visitors to the top of the hill, some with no overhead protection: I couldn’t work out how they keep the escalators running! The best way for you to get a sense of Glover Garden is to look at the photos, which start with this one.

There are a few other Western-style houses on the Hollander slopes (the houses, as you might expect, were built by Dutch settlers). Later that afternoon, I wandered through Chinatown, which is close to the European quarter — the Japanese let some Chinese traders in at the same time as the Europeans. When I was there, it seemed to be the epicentre of the Nagasaki Lantern Festival which was running at the time.

Hiroshima

Atomic Bomb Museum

The atomic bomb museum at Hiroshima seemed somewhat more comprehensive than that at Nagasaki — and that’s no black mark on the quality of the museum at Nagasaki. However, there was more to see in the museum at Hiroshima, where there is a very focused discussion of the lead up to the atomic bombings of Japan. Again, there isn’t really very much attribution of blame on the Americans and other Allied Forces for the horrific results of the bombings, but then the Japanese don’t really acknowledge their own brutality during the war. The displays mentioned several times the fact that there were thousands of forced labourers (mostly Korean and Chinese) killed by the bombing of Hiroshima, but they glossed over the fact that they were being brutally imprisoned by their ancestors.

Most interesting of the collection in the museum were the reproduction documents from various American and British committees produced in the time before the bombings. The Russians declared war on Japan just in time: only days later the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which forced the Japanese to surrender.

Peace Park

The Hiroshima Peace Park was pretty cold when I was wandering around it, and I was glad of the umbrella that I’d been able to buy (in a very tasty light brown, pink, and lime green tartan pattern: it has to be seen to be believed) because the rain was continuing to fall. The memorial cenotaph, famous throughout the world, takes centre place in the park, which it shares with other sculptures, such as the children’s peace monument.

Hiroshima Cathedral

I was also able to wander down to the Hiroshima Memorial Cathedral for World Peace (see what I mean about ‘peace’ being a very popular buzzword?), which was marked on the map from the tourist office, but isn’t mentioned in the Rough Guide. It is a large concrete building, with a very tall, square tower.

The church was the brainchild of Rev. Hugo Lassalle SJ, who sought an audience with the Pope, Pius XII, in September 1946. The result of this audience was the encouragement to solicit funds and other donations from all over the world. Again, it is interesting to note that, according to the English-language leaflet I picked up in the cathedral narthex, none of the ’special donations’ (such as altar, tabernacle, doors, organ, etc.) came from any of the Allied countries. Indeed, most came from cities, churches and dioceses in Germany.

Tune in next time for the account of my time in Osaka (including at Universal Studios Japan) and Kobe!