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Nagasaki memories Inbox David Mason 5:12 PM (12 minutes ago) to me Dear Koon, This is the 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. I spent three years as a Navy dependent in Sasebo, Japan from 1960 to 1963. Nagasaki is about 50 miles from Sasebo. In 1963 when I was age 16 I rode an old slow steam train with hard wooden seats from Sasebo to Nagasaki, munching on a bento lunch. I roamed around Nagasaki, and I eventually visited the site where the bomb was dropped. At that time it was marked by a pillar, as it is now. Not far from it stood a large bronze statue of a seated figure pointing upwards to the sky. I saw the heat twisted steel beams of the former Mitsubishi steel works. I also briefly visited the peace museum where exhibits of fused metal, melted glass and vegetables deformed by radiation preserved in formaldehyde were on display. I walked quickly past the photographs of the devastation. I was taken aback by the young girls working there with severe radiation burns on their faces and decided that I had seen enough. What prevented the city from being completely wiped out was the fact that it is built in narrow valleys. The bomb just destroyed the city in one of the valleys. It left the harbor and ship building works unscathed. So roughly half of the city was largely untouched. For instance I strolled around a small zoo that had been visited by former President Grant on his 1879 world tour. A small monument commemorating his visit was clearly unmarred by the atom blast of 1945. On the other hand, Hiroshima suffered a lot more damage since it sits on a plain. I was in Nagasaki 18 years after the event. I recall an old lady coming up to me on the street and slapping me on the face. Later an English speaking Japanese man befriended me and gave me a little tour. He said that he had lost his family to the bomb; he was out of town when it was dropped. He pointed out to me the ruins of a Catholic Church, which was destroyed by the blast. As we parted he told me then that he was a Christian. Once as part of an organized group of Navy Brats I attempted the Kennedy 50 mile hike from Sasebo to Nagasaki. I only made it to 39.5 miles. I had worn tennis shoes instead of the recommended sturdy leather shoes. We were advised to carry big sticks to scare off barking dogs as we passed through villages. After 30 miles of trekking my feet became painfully sensitive to every pebble. A friend and I sat ourselves on the porch of a country store and drank soda pop, while we waited for the accompanying aid car to pick us up. By that time my feet were reeking with the smell of Wintergreen oil. It took a couple of weeks for my feet and legs to recover. All these memories come back to me at this time of year. Later I learned that the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was manufactured in Hanford, Washington, by the Dupont Corporation. I certainly would not have known that in 1963. Sayonara, David