We are only a two hour train ride away from Nagasaki so we really must go and visit this fascinating but tragic city. In many respects Nagasaki is Japan's Ironbridge and this has nothing to do with the events of August 1945.
Ironbridge is known as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution which came to Japan, after about 200 years of complete isolation in the middle of the 19th century. Scotsman Thomas Blake Glover aged 21 arrived at the opening of Nagasaki port in 1859. Initially he was a tea merchant popped over from Shanghai. He soon expanded his activities into arms sales, warship building, coal mining, dock construction, railway building and brewing. He was a voracious and unprincipled capitalist. He supplied arms to several of the in-fighting clans. He helped set up and finance the Nagasaki Ironworks (which later became the Mitsubishi steelworks and ironically the excuse the Americans used to drop the atomic bomb on Nagasaki).
He set up a joint venture whereby 5 young men were sent to London to study Western Industrial methods. The Choshu Five as they became known later went on to be Prime Minister, first ever Foreign Minister, Industry Minister, Railways Minister and finally Master of the Mint (which Glover had, of course founded). Glover was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor, the first foreigner to receive the award. Quite a Cecil Rhodes and just as controversial but without doubt a huge influence on the modernization of Japan. He is my unsung hero.
Nagasaki was also the setting for Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly (guess who owned the house where the action takes place). Enough text, it's time for a picture, so why not another train.
Helen and I arriving at Nagasaki station. Note the name of the train company next to ours. Despite all the history and culture in this place it is very difficuult not to have what happened at two minutes past eleven on the 9th August 1945 in the very forefront of your mind.
In case anybody is unsure what I am talking about, this, (or something that looked very like it) was dropped from an American plane. 500 metres above this statue the second atomic bomb exploded. The Americans nick-named this device "Fat Man" in contrast to "Little Boy" which was the bomb they had exploded over Hiroshima 48 hours earlier. The two bombs were entirely different even down to the type of nuclear reactions. It was clearly important to learn as much as possible from this cynical killing experiment. You will hear the argument that they shortened the war and therefore saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Inconveniently for this rationale, the Japanese Emperor had signed the peace treaty before either of the bombs were detonated.
These are not workers in hard hats but Japanese schoolchildren filling in their worksheets which are following the National Curriculum. Here we are in the Atomic Bomb Museum which pulls no punches. Some of the photographs are both graphic and horrific. One third of the city of 240,000 people died that day or soon after. The killing power of modern nuclear weapons is many thousand times greater than these early "experiments ". As you leave the museum the last section is devoted to the countries that possess nuclear weapons today and what their armouries consist of. In nearly 80 years, it seems that we have learnt nothing. We are giving people like Donald Trump the button to press that can annihilate our planet.
The panoramic photograph below, as you can see from the inscription was taken on the 20th October 1945. Look how identical the skylines are but how the fore grounds have changed.
On some higher ground upstream of the hypo centre is the Peace Park which we walked round. It was interesting to compare various the types of sculpture from all around the world that had been commissioned mainly by cities rather than countries. A disappointing number worked on the old cliche of children held aloft and of course there were flocks of doves. Three now defunct countries stood shoulder to shoulder, Czechoslovia, DDR and USSR, none of which had much artistic merit. Look at the central statue by a Japanese sculptor and below it, the explanation.
There was a choir of schoolchildren singing a song of peace in front of the statue whilst we were there. They sounded beautiful in their innocence. That is my song in the blog title that's never heard.
I don't feel that I can add any more to this blog, other than to leave you with some of the pictures of statues that we liked.
The cloak of peace from many cities in New Zealand
The hand of friendship from Turkey. To close something a little more horrific from outside the Museum.
Ironbridge is known as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution which came to Japan, after about 200 years of complete isolation in the middle of the 19th century. Scotsman Thomas Blake Glover aged 21 arrived at the opening of Nagasaki port in 1859. Initially he was a tea merchant popped over from Shanghai. He soon expanded his activities into arms sales, warship building, coal mining, dock construction, railway building and brewing. He was a voracious and unprincipled capitalist. He supplied arms to several of the in-fighting clans. He helped set up and finance the Nagasaki Ironworks (which later became the Mitsubishi steelworks and ironically the excuse the Americans used to drop the atomic bomb on Nagasaki).
He set up a joint venture whereby 5 young men were sent to London to study Western Industrial methods. The Choshu Five as they became known later went on to be Prime Minister, first ever Foreign Minister, Industry Minister, Railways Minister and finally Master of the Mint (which Glover had, of course founded). Glover was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor, the first foreigner to receive the award. Quite a Cecil Rhodes and just as controversial but without doubt a huge influence on the modernization of Japan. He is my unsung hero.
Nagasaki was also the setting for Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly (guess who owned the house where the action takes place). Enough text, it's time for a picture, so why not another train.
Helen and I arriving at Nagasaki station. Note the name of the train company next to ours. Despite all the history and culture in this place it is very difficuult not to have what happened at two minutes past eleven on the 9th August 1945 in the very forefront of your mind.
In case anybody is unsure what I am talking about, this, (or something that looked very like it) was dropped from an American plane. 500 metres above this statue the second atomic bomb exploded. The Americans nick-named this device "Fat Man" in contrast to "Little Boy" which was the bomb they had exploded over Hiroshima 48 hours earlier. The two bombs were entirely different even down to the type of nuclear reactions. It was clearly important to learn as much as possible from this cynical killing experiment. You will hear the argument that they shortened the war and therefore saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Inconveniently for this rationale, the Japanese Emperor had signed the peace treaty before either of the bombs were detonated.
These are not workers in hard hats but Japanese schoolchildren filling in their worksheets which are following the National Curriculum. Here we are in the Atomic Bomb Museum which pulls no punches. Some of the photographs are both graphic and horrific. One third of the city of 240,000 people died that day or soon after. The killing power of modern nuclear weapons is many thousand times greater than these early "experiments ". As you leave the museum the last section is devoted to the countries that possess nuclear weapons today and what their armouries consist of. In nearly 80 years, it seems that we have learnt nothing. We are giving people like Donald Trump the button to press that can annihilate our planet.
The panoramic photograph below, as you can see from the inscription was taken on the 20th October 1945. Look how identical the skylines are but how the fore grounds have changed.
On some higher ground upstream of the hypo centre is the Peace Park which we walked round. It was interesting to compare various the types of sculpture from all around the world that had been commissioned mainly by cities rather than countries. A disappointing number worked on the old cliche of children held aloft and of course there were flocks of doves. Three now defunct countries stood shoulder to shoulder, Czechoslovia, DDR and USSR, none of which had much artistic merit. Look at the central statue by a Japanese sculptor and below it, the explanation.
There was a choir of schoolchildren singing a song of peace in front of the statue whilst we were there. They sounded beautiful in their innocence. That is my song in the blog title that's never heard.
I don't feel that I can add any more to this blog, other than to leave you with some of the pictures of statues that we liked.
The cloak of peace from many cities in New Zealand
The hand of friendship from Turkey. To close something a little more horrific from outside the Museum.
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