7 May 2007

Nagasaki Peace Museum and Peace Park

This day was jam-packed with action. We managed to fit so much in on this day! We went outside to find that it was pouring down with rain. Our mission was to find the Nagasaki Peace Museum. We were walking down this street which had a sign pointing to where the Peace Museum was, so we followed the sign. We then realised that we had been walking for half an hour in the pouring rain, in the wrong direction! We were getting cranky and very frustrated at this point. We asked about ten people how to get to this museum and they had all pointed us in the wrong direction. I think a lot of what we were saying was getting lost in translation!

Anyway, we finally found this Peace Museum and it was really fascinating. It was similar to the Hiroshima Peace Museum as we learnt about how the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on 9th August 1945 at 11:02am. It was interesting to walk around and read all the information about what happened to the people and the town.

One thing I learnt that I found to be the most interesting was that there were so many Korean people who had died from the atomic bomb. The Korean people were forced to live and work in Japan by the Japanese people under poor working conditions and were treated really badly. The saddest part was that they died from the atomic bomb explosion in a country where they didn’t even want to be.



The most interesting part about this was that in the peace park, there was a special monument dedicated to the Korean people who had died from the atomic bomb explosion. The sign next to the monument was written as an apology to the Korean people for what they made them go through during those times in the war.

After the peace museum, we walked through the Nagasaki Peace Park. This park had many different monuments symbolising different aspects of freedom and peace and the new generation. My favourite monument was the water fountain which was one of the main attractions in the peace park.

The ‘Fountain of Peace’ was placed in the park because after the atomic bomb exploded, many civilians died from thirst and starvation. The ‘Fountain of Peace’ was created as an offering of water to the victims who had died from thirst after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

The Hypercentre was also another attraction in Nagasaki which was the exact spot that the atomic bomb was dropped. There was a beautiful garden surrounding the hypercentre and the remnants of the catholic church was also placed in this section.

5 comments:

Tinz said...

Nagasaki had a very different feel from Hiroshima.

Teresa said...

What was the difference? My daughter has the chance to take a trip and choose from going to Hiroshima vs Nagasaki. Which do you recommend?

Marie said...

If you're daughter can only go to one or the other, I would definitely recommend going to Hiroshima. Nagasaki was excellent, but Hiroshima will blow her mind away. I would also recommend that she goes to Miyajima while she is in Hiroshima by ferry because that was probably the best place I had been to in my stay in Japan.

Teresa said...

Thanks for the advise. If we are able to raise the funds she will be traveling with People to People and there are 2 trips to choose from. If interested you can check out the details at http://www.peopletopeople.com/TravelExperience/Pages/TravelExperience.aspx Choice 1: Land of the Rising sun Choice 2: Treasures of Japan. We are trying to decide which one would be best. If you have any advise we would appreciate it.

Will said...

A really interesting read and it was really good you pointed out about the Koreans who died due to the bomb. My friend Paule Saviano traveled there to photograph survivors last year and the individual stories he collected are amazing accounts of survival. If you are interested in delving deeper into what happened in Nagasaki I suggest you google Paule.

Thanks for sharing.