Today, I stood in Nagasaki at a place that doesn’t need explanation.
Five hundred feet above where I was standing is where the atomic bomb detonated on August 9, 1945.
There is no crater you can step into, no dramatic scar in the ground. Just air. Space. A terrible absence.
I wept.
Not loudly. Not suddenly. It came the way grief often does –delayed, heavy, unavoidable. I couldn’t understand how human beings created something capable of erasing civilians in an instant. Not soldiers. Families. Children. Lives paused mid-sentence.
I read every epitaph. Every sign. Each one felt like a quiet voice asking to be remembered without being turned into a lesson or a statistic. There is no way to stand there and not feel small –not in insignificance, but in responsibility.
Two years ago, I visited Hiroshima. I’ve called it my favourite city in Japan, which sounds strange until you’ve been there. Hiroshima doesn’t hide what happened –but it refuses to let destruction be the final word.
The city is alive, generous, intentional. It carries grief and hope in equal measure.
Nagasaki does the same, but differently. The Peace Park here feels softer, almost tender. Not forgetful –just committed to remembering without hatred. The memorials don’t shout. They ask.
The promise of never again lives quietly here.
Standing beneath that sky, I thought about power –how easily it s abused, how rarely it’s questioned until it’s too late. I thought about how fragile peace is, and how deliberately it must be chosen.
Travel often shows beauty. Sometimes it shows truth.
Today was the latter.
