February 26, 2005 – A Visit to Nagasaki

February 26, 2005 – A Visit to Nagasaki

In April 1966, the USNS Michelson deviated once again from its usual routine of just over three weeks at sea followed by a week in Yokosuka to re-supply. This month instead the ship anchored in Sasebo which is near the southeastern most tip of the island of Japan. Nearby is the city of Nagasaki one of two Japanese cities suffering an atomic bomb attack during World War II. Both cities are a short boat ride from Pusan on the Western coast of South Korea. Japan resembles a crescent moon with the island of Hokkaido at its most northern tip and the islands of Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu curving southeast with Tokyo on Honshu nearly due south of Hokkaido at the inflection of the curve.

It was the only visit the ship ever made to the southern port and everyone on board ship treated the visit as their one chance to visit this beautiful southern part of Japan. I had determined that on my days off I would visit Nagasaki to view one of only two cities in the world to have suffered an atomic bomb attack. My sojourn to Nagasaki from Sasebo was by train. It began at the Sasebo train station, a place bustling with passengers, that early morning I chose to begin my journey. I had a small overnight case containing a change of clothes as I planned to spend the night in a small hotel and return late the following afternoon.

Sasebo and Nagasaki are both on the western coast of Kyushu, Japan’s largest southern island. Kyushu is separated from the main island of Honshu by a narrow stretch of water separating the smaller city of Shimonosek on Honshu from the larger city of Kitakyushu on Kyushu. Sasebo is north and slightly west of Nagasaki—under 100 miles—about an hour and twenty minutes by train. The rail line between the two cities passes through some of the loveliest vistas I’ve ever seen. The train trip followed the western coast of Kyushu and we were treated to sights of lush green islands and a blue ocean.

On arriving at Nagasaki, I found a small hotel that sat on a slight hill and offered a scenic view of the city. When I was about to leave for a walking tour, the mama-san who spoke about as much English as I spoke Japanese, took me by the arm and pointed in the direction of Hypocenter Park, the place where the bomb rained destruction on this beautiful city. Yet as I look in the direction she was pointing, there was little to suggest that the city had been visited by any kind of destruction, least of all something as massive as the atomic bomb that fell August 9, 1945 at 11:02AM. A score of years can cover over an incredible devastation in the earth. What surprised me was that the kindly mama-san, who went out of her way to show me the spot, seemed unfazed at showing a citizen of the country that visited the disaster to that very spot. For her, the event was as ancient as a devastating earthquake a century ago.

When I arrived at the park, I visited the memorial monolith marking the exact point of the atomic bomb explosion. I next visited the Peace Statue and realized that the mama-san had used the same pose after pointing to the park, The statue is of a seated man, his right hand raised and pointing skyward, his left hand horizontal to the ground in front of him. The former warns of the threat of nuclear disaster; the later a gesture for peace. Why did it seem that the former had more gravity than the latter. Perhaps because I was part of the force that could easily rain down far larger bombs than the one that crashed down on Nagasaki.

I spent the rest of the day walking about the city of Nagasaki, which was slower paced than frenetic Tokyo. I kept looking for signs of the destruction but found none. I’m sure the seasoned observer would easily have spotted signs I was overlooking. When evening came, I watched the sunset and marveled at how the day I had just experienced and was putting behind me was yet to being for the rest of the world. It made me realized that I was not only separated by distance from the rest of the world, I was also separate by time.