Where in the World is Kassie Kilpatrick?: Nagasaki Japan

What a day this turned out to be. Kurt and I got off together and first decided just to walk/ hike through the neighborhoods. Everything is built so close together on the hills. The streets are very narrow and winding paths or stairs. Street signs are little name plates on the stone walls. We basically just kept walking and making our way up for about an hour and a half. We found a beautiful cemetery. One side was private and had beautifully engraved monuments and flowers. The public side was not as elegant but quite interesting. We took lots of photos…my favorite is the cross I took on my I phone with my hipstamatic app. The view from the top was beautiful and we could see our ship down below which was a nice photo opp. We then hailed a taxi to go to the atomic bomb museum. The taxi doors open automatically when they slow down to pick you up! Kurt kept saying yes to the driver in Japanese and nodding his head. So the driver kept talking thinking Kurt understood. That was so funny to me. We got to the museum and I wasn’t quite expecting the experience that the rest of the day brought.

First of all- being an American in that museum automatically makes you feel a bit awful. The first part of the museum was very interesting as it was a lot of artifacts and things found in the rubble. It also showed pieces of churches, towers, etc that stayed in tact (very small pieces). There was a whole display of melted rosary beads that were hauntingly beautiful- almost glass sculptures. There were historical timelines of events and decisions leading up to the attack. Scarily, Einstein and Bohrs had warned that dropping this bomb would start a nuclear arms race- how prophetic. The second part of the museum was so depressing and hard to witness. It told the stories of survivors and showed photos of the aftermath. Two photos in particular I will never ever forget. The first was of a man who had been severly injured. Most of his flesh was missing and the photo captured his face- which immediately brought tears to my eyes and knotted my stomach. His eyes were showing such a traumatic fear, shock, and horror. But yet they were almost blank. Its so hard to describe. Almost as if he was somewhere else- somewhere that he may never be able to come back from. .. The second photo was of two young brothers. They looked maybe ten and seven if I had to guess. The oldest was carrying his younger, injured brother- and supposedly carried him many miles to a hospital to receive help…only to realize that there was no hospital left and they were alone still. Trying to imagine what they just went through and the courage and love of the one to carry the other to what they hoped would be safety and yet to find nothing…to be alone in a world that was falling apart at such a young age…

The next part of the museum talked about nuclear arms and after starting to read and look I decided it best not to as I already have such a strong fear of war and specifically this issue. There was a world map that had 3d bombs in the countries to represent how many nuclear bombs they had. Russia had 13,000. America 9,400. We by far had the most- but Kurt pointed out that even North Korea’s one was scarier by far. However there is definitely more than enough bombs out there to destroy the world many times over.

What struck me the most about Nagasaki was there mission for Peace. This place has experienced devastation like no other and has made it their mission to practice Peace. You can feel it in their atmosphere. The Peace Park outside the museum at Ground Zero was absolutely beautiful. Hauntingly so. An elderly Japanese man walked through the park and up to the monument at Ground Zero to pay his respects. I saw him wipe a tear from his eye as he turned to leave.