Night

    Nagasaki is the second of two cities destroyed at the end of World War Two by nuclear weapons. Like Hiroshima, the thriving metropolis that rose from the ashes of war is cheerful, forward thinking, and utterly devoted to the idea of peace and the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Embarrassingly, Marty and I both woke up later than we wanted to, and the two hour train ride to from Sasebo to Nagasaki made it so that we did not arrive until the afternoon.

Food is a fundamental part of traveling Japan, and out of hundreds of meals I'd had only two were not pleasant. Regional varieties make it so that you can never be bored, and you're still technically eating "Japanese Food," even though it's completely and utterly different than what you had last night. Marty and I pick a ramen shack for lunch.

Ramen is technically not Japanese, at least according to the guidebooks. The cooking style made its way over from China hundreds of years ago, and the Japanese took to it with typical enthusiasm. Ramen starts its life as pork based broth, to which noodles and other fixins are added. Other types of ramen include seaweed based broths and fish based broths, but it's best enjoyed as pork. Made right, the broth is thick and meaty, and the noodles mostly, but not all the way cooked. Other fixins include bamboo shoots, green onions and a large chunk of pork that melts in your mouth. Marty says this isn't really a meal, but I've yet to feel hungry after a big bowl of ramen.

After our filling meal, we make our way to the former Dutch trading post. From the early 1600s until the mid 1800s, Japan was an isolationist nation. Fearing foreign influence and in the aftermath of several rebellions, the Shogunate closed the nation to outsiders, allowing only a few Chinese and Dutch traders to operate out of a small port to the south: Nagasaki. The former Dutch trading post was located on a reclaimed island in Nagasaki harbor, and few non-Japanese were allowed off the island. Marty and I spent an hour there looking around at the strange amalgamation of Western and Japanese architecture, as well as the interesting history of the island embassy.

By the time we left, it was too late for us to visit the Nagasaki Peace Museum, but we felt compelled to visit the monument anyway. On our way there, just before sunset, we made a quick detour.

Japan is literally filled with memorials. Everywhere you look there is a temple or shrine to someone or some event. This particular memorial that we stumbled across commemorated 26 Christians who were captured by the Shogunate after Christianity had been outlawed. The Shogunate chose to punish them in the traditional way: by crucifying them. The memorial is a large wall that faces Nagasaki bay. On the wall are friezes of each of the martyrs, and my mind goes blank for a second when I realize that three of them are children. Marty says nothing, but goes down on one knee in front of the memorial. I stand. Our prayers are silent.

Behind us, the sun sets over the harbor. The night can only get darker.

It is full dark when we finally make it to the Atomic Bomb Memorial Park. Like Hiroshima, there are trees everywhere, and a wide open space allows large crowds to gather. Marty and I have come on a fortuitous night it seems: there are small lanterns surrounding the memorial and leading up the steps to the main museum area. Hundreds of people mill around taking pictures and lighting candles.

The main memorial is a black pillar rising up out of the ground at the exact spot the bomb exploded five hundred meters above. It is currently surrounded by lanterns in concentric rings. The candlelight gives an eerie, haunting glow to the place. Again, Marty and I do not speak. To speak would be disrespectful of the dead.

We flow from one portion of the memorial to the next, up the stairs lit by candlelight, past an ever burning torch to an open plaza area with little islands of candles. A Japanese band plays, and the noise fills the solemn space with cheer.

Still Marty and I do not speak.

We follow the path across the plaza, over a road, and up to an observation deck high above the rest of the memorial. We are as high as we can be, and our view is outstanding. The city before us is like a narrow carpet of light, flowing down the river between the two ridges that dominate the landscape and into the harbor.

We do not speak. A long minute passes.

We descend. Passing the plaza where the band has packed up for the night, down past the eternal flame, steps light by candles, back to the black memorial light by thousands of candles.

Silently, we turn and leave.

When we are nearly a mile away I feel safe to speak, but strangely, not in my own language. "Was glaubst?"

I am sure I’m butchering the German, but Marty knows what's I'm saying anyway. His German is almost as bad as mine.

He considers, and responds with: "Schwartz."

I nod. "Schwartz Nacht."

Silence returns. Our limited German cannot sustain conversation.

I don't know why we felt like we couldn't express ourselves in our own language, but it is one of the defining memories of that night, that our native words felt insufficient to express our thoughts on the matter.