We’ve spent the last two days in and around Nagasaki with Josh’s friend Ayako. We mostly just hung out and did random stuff (as Joylani’s post details), but I would like to write a little about our afternoon visit to the Atomic Bomb Museum. It covered all aspects of nuclear warfare, from the scientific advancements in atomic energy of the past hundred years to the politics that drove the development of nuclear weapons to the cold-war and post-cold-war arms races. Of course, the bulk of the exhibit was dedicated to the more sobering topic of the “fat man” bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The facts highlighted in museum made it horrific to even imagine: a single bomb that not only flattened and entire city in seconds, but whose heat wave reached 4000-5000 C, whose toxic mushroom cloud reached miles high into the sky, and killed tens of thousands in seconds (and many more tens of thousands in the following minutes, days, and years). The most powerful part of the exhibit was seeing the artifacts from the bombing. Wood that had been carbonized in a split-second, not to mention carbonized rice and stones. Permanent silhouettes of people, trees, and random objects burned into walls and pavement. Melted coins, bottles, and even steel I-beams. The craziest thing I saw were ceramic roof tiles that had bubbled surfaces, a result of them having cooled very quickly after momentarily being boiled. I cannot even imagine clay or concrete boiling, much less how hot it would have to be to boil in an instant. The most horrific  things I saw were the photos- skin burned off bodies, blackened skeletons, completely disfigured people, and people crushed from debris. The highest recorded hurricanes apparently have winds up to 80 knots, while the bomb dropped on Nagasaki created winds up to 170 knots. Since the bombing, people have found shards of metal and ceramic in trees that have been cut down and sawed up. Of course, the concept of war is horrific enough, but the museum showed just how much suffering (both instant and lasting in nature) could be inflicted in seconds. Having studied the development and the decision to use atomic bombs on Japan, I personally do not think it was necessary. But whatever your opinion, I think the museum did a good job of implicitly communicating the pure wrongness of dropping such a bomb on a city (official target was the “Nagasaki Urban Area”). One shortcoming of the museum though, was the brief section explaining Japan’s role in war. For one, it was all in Japanese while almost all other text in the museum were also in English (very suspicious) and two, for a museum so vocally pacifist, it did not even mention Japan’s responsibility and actions during the war. After the museum, we visited the hypocenter and the adjacent peace park. Besides some signs about 4-5 feet up on some trees that indicated the ground level before the bomb was detonated above that spot, there wasn’t much of interest. Mainly, I had the same optimistic feelings that I had looking at booby traps in Vietnam. 60 years ago, America dropped the deadliest bomb in history and today I stood safely in Nagasaki, while America and Japan are the closest of friends. I do not think that war will ever cease, but at least things bad international relations can improve.