Kyushu
Nagasaki
Three days after Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. Between the two, upwards of a quarter of a million people lost their lives, but only roughly half of them on the first day. The other half took a few months. The reason for bombing Nagasaki was simple: it has always been a major port and ship building city, and at the time of the attack Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, located in Nagasaki, was a major contractor for the Imperial Navy.
The town has been a major port for quite some time. It was first visited in 1543 by the Portugese who wanted to trade with Japan. And convert everyone to Catholicism. And invade and take over. So in 1597 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a lovable despot, crucified 26 Franciscans and over the next few years, under the leadership of different civic leaders, Japan kicked out and banned Catholics and Catholicism. By 1637 the Portugese were kicked out of their kind-of-home, kind-of-prison on Dejima Island in Nagasaki Harbour and the Dutch were moved there as the Dutch had a much more predictable set of motivations as far as the Japanese were concerned.
Anyhow, that's Nagasaki in a nutshell. Let's go look at it.
Cool. No idea what the terraces are for.
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Motoring across the inland sea.
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Himejima Island. They make tiger prawns here in giant lagoons connected to the sea. You eat them "dancing" - alive, and trying very hard to get away.
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The Chikugo River Lift Bridge, originally for trains but now for pedestrians. That means this is Saga, so we're close to our destination.
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But I think we'll have to detour around some scud.
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Or drive through it.
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Okay, well this is embarrasing. We're at Nagasaki airport but not really near Nagasaki itself, and the weather's as you can see so we're not going any further. So we'll talk about it here. Nagasaki is more recently known as the second place on earth that the Yanks dropped a nuke on, the first being Hiroshima and the third being Riviere-du-Loupe. But in times past it played an important role in Japan's Period of Isolation, more or less fictionalized in the novell Shogun. After Tokugawa leyesu became Shogun he closed the borders and forbade foreign travel. But trade with the Netherlands, and through them, China, was essential. So it was limited to the port of Nagasaki. So this is our stop for the night. I'm not sure what our route is tomorrow, but maybe we'll get to see the town from the air. Oyasuminasai. |