Nagasaki, the 9th August - TV screen (2)
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
Four pictures from a news report on the 62th anniversary of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. See notes for subtitle (rough) translation.
The Statue for Peace in Nagasaki, which stands at the Ground Zero, is a work by 北村西望 (Kitamura Seibo: 1884 - 1987), a famed sculpter from Nagasaki. He began working on this statue in 1950, five years after the bombing, and completed in 1955. It is a combination of the God's love and Buddha's mercy, with the right hand pointing to the sky to give warnings, and the left hand stretching horisontally for peace.
Nagasaki area has a lot of Christians because that was where the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries arrived in the 16th century. Before long, the government banned all the missionary activities in Japan, but people in Nagasaki kept their faith, despite all the severe religious oppression against them. They have many Catholic churchesin Nagasaki, and the cathedral called Urakami Tenshu-do ("tenshu" means "the lord").
The cathedral was very badly damaged by the bomb on 9th August 1945. Wikipedia in English has an entry for the cathedral.
-- TV screen, the NHK's 7 O'Clock News, 9th August 2007.
en.wikipedia.org has a good entry about the bombing:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Na...
