Nagasaki Remembered
9th August 1945 - the US dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing more than 70,000 people 1st February 1955 - I am a 17 year old lad sailing into Nagasaki Harbour on a British tramp ship serving as an apprentice deck officer. I have already visited Yokohama, Kawasaki, and Tokyo in the previous year, 1954, on my first deep-sea voyage. I was deeply aware of the terrible event that had taken place just over 9 years earlier but to me it looked little different to those other places in Tokyo Bay. The Bay area had been massively firebombed. Widespread reconstruction, bomb sites, horrible roads, paper shacks, the smell of human excreta overridden by the familiar aroma of hair oil everywhere, loads of neons lights at night, the glare of furnaces, and brief sights of old Japan. It was hard to find any sign of death and injury in the populace. Now the Second Mate’s name was Dai Jones,I have never forgotten that, he came from Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, in Anglesey. He was in his twenties and