Travel Blog: A Grey Day in Nagasaki

Is there a theme developing here?? Good thing we're not visiting any other atomic bomb-related sites. Maybe we can get some sun and warm weather. As it stands, many people on the ship caught a cold in Hiroshima, including us. Fortunately we could get some Nyquil caplets on the ship, and they took care of the worst of it in short order.

Larry and I were supposed to do different tours here, but he decided to stay on the ship with his cold. I had booked the 'Highlights of Nagasaki' tour which included the Peace Park but not the Ground Zero Museum. I was also visiting a couple of other spots in town.

My tour began at the Nagasaki Peace Park, which is a memorial to the second atomic bombing of Japan on August 9, 1945, three days after Hiroshima. The central figure of the park is the Peace Statue, sculpted by an artist from Nagasaki Prefecture, Seibo Kitamura.

There is a lot of symbolism in this figure: the
extended left arm is the threat of nuclear weapons,
the upraised right is eternal peace. The legs
signify meditation and the initiative to stand up
and rescue the people of the world.

Two sculptures topped with peace cranes
flank the Peace Statue. All schoolchildren
in Japan have to make a trip to either Hiroshima
or Nagasaki, and they all bring peace
cranes they have made themselves to hang
near the memorials.

The Nagasaki Peace Bell was erected in 1977 and dedicated to the victims of the bomb, especially labourers and students. The Nagasaki Bell for Peace Association rings the bell on the 9th of every month at 11:02 a.m., the time of the bombing, and from August 6 to August 9 commemorating the days of the two bombings and those in between. Special ceremonies are held on August 9 and September 21, the International Day of Peace.

There is also a sculpture park where various cities and countries have donated sculptures as memorials to those lost and for the hope of world peace.

At the far end of Peace Park is the Fountain of Peace. This fountain is dedicated to those who died from the blast, and bears a quotation from a young girl so desperate for water that she drank whatever she could get, even though it was contaminated.

The quotation from Sashiko Yamaguchi
is engraved here

We had a chance to go to the Nagasaki Hypocentre Park not far from the Memorial Park. Since Larry wasn't able to, I went to see the memorial there. It is a fair sized open park, with only a few sculptures.

The Hypocentre Monolith, marking the
precise spot of the detonation

Remnants of a wall of the original
Urakami Cathedral are preserved here

Monument to the Victims

We only had a few minutes to stay in the park, so I had no chance to take a good look around. Apparently it was thought that nothing would grow near ground zero for at least 75 years, but only months afterward, plants began to sprout. Now there are 300 cherry trees surrounding the park. It is undoubtedly quite beautiful when they are in full bloom in March and April.

Urakami Cathedral and its importance were pointed out to us briefly by our guide while we were in the Peace Park. The Cathedral is only 500 metres from Ground Zero and was completely destroyed, along with all of the worshippers attending a mass inside. The new church was built in 1959 and remodeled in 1980 to more resemble how the original looked on the outside.

There is quite a history to this church as well. Nagasaki has always been the centre of Christianity in Japan. A French priest discovered a group of Christians in Urakami village when he arrived in 1865, even though Christianity had been banned by the ruling governments since 1614. 'Hidden Christians' were persecuted by local governors and made to trample on an image of the Virgin Mary. To continue hiding in plain sight they adapted prayers and masses to resemble Shinto and Buddhist rituals, and made their statues of Mary 'disguised' as Buddha. 3,600 villagers were banished to exile by the government in 1869, and remained away for 7 years. When they returned they decided they would build a church dedicated to the 650 who died during their exile, and for it bought the land that was once used for the humiliating trampling rituals. They couldn't do anything until 1895 when the ban on their faith was lifted, and they finally began construction on their church. The actual name of the church is the Immaculate Conception Cathedral and until 1945 it was the largest Christian structure in the Asia-Pacific area.

Our next stop was at another historical area called Dejima. The history of Nagasaki as a port city goes back to 1571, during the Edo period and the reign of the Tokugawa Shogunate. There was some trade with the Portuguese and Dutch going on, but the Shogunate wanted to maintain an isolationist policy. Dejima Island was created as the only place where the Europeans could live and run their trade through the port. Unfortunately for the Portuguese, who also wanted to spread Christianity, there was the Shimabara-Amakusa revolt of Christian peasants in 1637, and as a result the Portuguese ships were banned from coming to Japan. The Dutch trading post was moved from Hirado where it had been established to Dejima because the Dutch, mostly Calvinist Protestants, didn't bring priests to try to convert the Japanese. The Dutch continued using Dejima until 1798 when a fire destroyed many of the buildings, and in 1854 the Port of Nagasaki was officially opened and Dejima was no longer needed.

Outside of the warehouses

Front of the Chief Factor's Residence. He was
the Boss.

One of the gates through which the import
and export of goods was done.

As Dejima Island was neglected for the better part of 60 years, it became more of an archaeological site. The restoration project is ongoing and only consists of one street at the moment, but there is a small sized diorama of the original settlement in a garden area. The ultimate goal is to rebuild all of the buildings and even restore the 'island' as an island. Right now it is only a two-sided moat beside a roadway. Here are some views of the model town:

The bridge we crossed and the entrance gate

Our final stop on the tour was at Glover Garden. It is a testament to the integration of western industrialization into Japan's economy under the Meiji Restoration. Thomas Glover, a Scotsman, came to Japan at the age of 21 in 1859 to buy tea for a British merchant house, and shortly afterward established his own company, Glover & Co.

He helped the anti-government Choshu factions (remember Takasugi Shinkasu the samurai from Shimonoseki?) get warships and weapons to help overthrow the Shogunate, obviously against the law and also against some trading agreements between Britain and Japan. However, he managed to avoid prosecution and when Emperor Meiji took power he was in good favour. He brought a small steam train to Japan to show them the advantages of the railroad, and also had a hand in commissioning Japan's first warship in the Imperial Japanese Navy from a shipyard in Aberdeen. He developed the first coal mine and brought the dry dock for ship repairs to Japan. He also established the first shipbuilding company in Japan, which later became the Mitsubishi Company. And probably the most well-known of the companies he founded was the Japan Brewing Company, now Kirin.

Glover Garden is a museum area dedicated to Glover and other westerners who helped establish industry in Japan. Unfortunately we didn't get to spend much time in Glover House itself, but more at the Mitsubishi Second Dock House. This building was moved from the docks where it housed sailors whose ships were under repair, to its place at the top of Glover Garden. The views from there are lovely.

One of the western-style homes in
Glover Garden

The No. 2 Dock House in its
new location.

The view could be nicer. We had off and
on drizzle most of the morning.

For his contributions to Japan's industrialization, Thomas Glover received the Order of the Rising Sun from the Emperor. This is the original certificate on display in the Dock House.