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On August 9, 1945, at 11:02AM the American B-29 bomber BOCKSCAR dropped a plutonium bomb called Fatboy on Nagasaki. It is ironic that Nagasaki was not the intended target when BOCKSCAR took off from Tinien Air Base that morning, but clouds covered the original target Kokura and so they proceeded to the secondary target of Nagasaki.
Clouds also covered much of Nagasaki, but a small break in the cloud cover allowed them to drop the bomb. It exploded 500 meters above the surface, hence the designation of Ground Zero as a "hypocenter" as opposed to an epicenter. The bomb exploded with the force of 21,000 tons of TNT.
There seems to be no agreement on exactly how many died that day and how many died as a result of the bomb. Some literature says 40,000 died that day, our guide says 75,000 and we also saw a statistic of 59,000. Most agree that about 150,000 died by the end of 1945 from some effect of the bomb.
Our first stop on our tour was at the Peace Memorial Park. The beautiful Peace Statue was complete in 1955, 10 years after the bombing. The statue's right hand points to the sky to signify where the bomb came from while the left hand is outstretched in a gesture of peace. The right leg is bent under and the eyes are closed to symbolize tranquility and meditation while the statues left leg is planted ready for action to assist humanity. It is quite beautiful The park is lined with statures donated by various sister-cities of Nagasaki and countries of the world.
From the Peace Memorial Park we drove to the Atomic Bomb Museum. You will find not interior pictures because camera's were not allowed. It is quite moving, but it is about what you expect, a tribute to the horror of the bombing through many photographs and twisted or scorched artifacts.
There is a decided emphasis on the suffering of mothers and children, but when one realized that the men were off fighting a war, this is not too surprising. The museum makes much of the fact that many scientists and politicians advised the US not to drop the bomb and I did not see mention of the fact that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor.
The day we were there, there were hundreds of Senior High School Students there and our guide told us it was part of the countries Senior High School curriculum. It did make for extremely crowded conditions.
From the museum it is a short, but steep walk across the road and down a flight of steps to the "Hypocenter" or ground zero. which is marked with a black obelisk. There is a beautiful statue in the area which was placed there to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of the bomb. It depicts a mother holding a stricken child in her arms. One group of the Senior High School students had a ceremony to honor the victims at ground zero while we were there. They sang some songs and then placed paper cranes in memorial for the victims. It was interesting to see.
Here are the pictures from these venues: