Trip to Nagasaki (4) - Church destroyed by atomic bomb

The check-out time was 12:00, so we went back to the hotel around 11:45. As it was lunch time, restaurants on the guidebook were surely crowded. After check-out, we bought a one-day ticket of the tram and went to JR Nagasaki Station. There we left our baggage in a locker and had a lunch in a Chinese restaurant. When it is impossible to have a vegetarian or vegan dish, I choose fish rather than meat. This time, I had saraudon with vegetables and seafood on. Then, we took a tram in front of the train station.

The last destination of this trip was Urakami where the atomic bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945. It was also a district where hidden Christians lived. As I wrote in the last article, they came to Oura Church in 1865 and confessed their faith to Father Petitijean though the ban of Christianity still continued. In 1867, a severe crackdown (Urakami Yoban Kuzure) began, and all the believers in Urakami were finally transported to other regions in Japan. They went through forced labor and tortures for conversion, and 662 out of 3394 people died. When the ban of Christianity ended in 1873, the survivors returned to Urakami. After that they started to build their own church. In 1914, Urakami Cathedral was completed. It was said to be the largest church in the East. The atomic bomb was dropped 500m away from this church.

Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum is located near the tram stop Atomic Bomb Museum. The exhibition was started with pictures taken before August 9, 1945. One of them was taken in a sacrament of confirmation. In the picture, there were many children dressed neatly in kimono, and the hairstyle of the girls reminded me of a picture of my grandmother in her childhood. I wondered how many of them survived from the bomb, and became sad.

The atomic bomb dropped in Nagasaki killed about 74,000 people. Urakami Cathedral was also destroyed beyond recognition. All the people inside were killed. There was a rosary melted by heat exhibited in a showcase. It was horrible.

As in Hiroshima, there was a clock that stopped when the bomb was dropped. It showed 11:02. In the museum, it was prohibited to take pictures. But some of the exhibits were unforgettable. The pictures taken after the bombing were painful to look at: charred bodies, people badly burned, rubble, etc.

In addition, there was a room that showed a chronological table of wars, victims of experiments of nuclear weapons, and so on. The exhibition of this museum was very well organized. After we left the museum, we walked to Urakami Cathedral. It was just 7-minute walk, but it was a little tiring because we had to go up slopes. The church was rebuilt in 1959.

In front of the church, there were ruins of the old church destroyed by the atomic bomb.

Urakami Cathedral was admission free. When we arrived there, there was a chorus group inside singing in front of the alter. We walked through the backmost passage quietly, seeing stained glass and hearing their song. Both stained glass and the song were very beautiful, and I thought this was really a church for believers. I imagined that there might be descendants of survivors of the atomic bomb in the chorus group.

Before we returned to Nagasaki Station, we dropped in a dance shop near JR Urakami Station because my mother wanted to see dresses. The owner of the shop said that she had seen the pope. It was Pope John Paul II who visited Urakami Cathedral in 1981.
We left JR Nagasaki Station at 15:47 and arrived at Hamamatsu at 22:27. Though the schedule was rather hard, both my mother and I had a very good time during the trip.