Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
Katie and I visited the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum (長崎原爆資料館) over the weekend. The museum is in Nagasaki City (長崎市) where the second bomb was dropped.
Parts of the museum are architecturally beautiful, with a dramatic entrance hall and a waterfall fountain. Katie mentioned that the large fountain is because so many people died wanting water.
I found myself taking pictures almost exclusively of the bits of wreckage, things melted and broken in the blast.
I did take a few pictures of things with pieces of bone in them, but not of the photographs or artwork. I don’t know exactly why. Some of the photos were disturbing, showing people with patches of skin burned off or simply burned corpses, but some showed only blasted landscape. The art included paper cranes symbolizing peace.
It might have been that I see taking and posting pictures as a form of expression and only felt comfortable overlaying that on the architecture and found artifacts. Or it might have been something else. All I really know is that I noticed myself only taking certain kinds of pictures and decided to continue.
To end on a lighter note, we took a ferry on the way there and back. There were lots of seagulls flying right by the boat, and you could buy bread to feed them.
