Colahan (DD 658) - Naval Cruise Book

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Overlooking the temple's main steps, and The main room ofthe temple. the city. The temple was on a hill overlook- ing the city. All around the com- pound that held the main buildings were gardens ot colorful Japanese bushes, shrubs and trees. The main buildings of the temple were of stone darkened by time and wood lustrous from years of polishing. The main room was decorated with brilliant red, green and gold drapes, the polished floor was covered with pale yellow reed mats. ln the center was a kneeler. lt was a quiet, serene scene, yet, you felt the air of de- sertion as you looked around the buildings. Even the Japanese people that were there seemed to have come as spectators-coming as you, to view what had been. Hastings: l wonder it I should take a picture of that. Page Thirty-nine

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The G-inrei--a Japanese restaurant with the decor of an old German tavern. Our stomachs said noon-our wrist watches said noon. Yet, the trip had only been 50 miles long. lt was true tho, it had taken us 4 hours to travel 50 miles. But, we were finally entering Naga- saki. We had reached the crest of the mountains about l l 230-Ever since we had been slowly dropping down, down into the valley that holds the city. On both sides of the bus, buildings jutted out of the hillside, below us we could see streetcars and paved streets. Our guide explained-this part of the city had not been touched by the bomb. We stopped for lunch in a little Japanese restaurant, deco- rated like an old German tavern. After lunch, our guide told us that before going to the site of the A Bomb damage he would like to show us an old temple that overlooked the city. Going from the restaurant to the temple, Na- gasaki looked like any other Japa- nese city with its narrow streets crowded with people in a mixture of western and oriental dress. Its little shops with their shelves of candy jars filled with dark, leath- Left Page Thirty-eight ery looking dried sea horse and shrimp, next to boxes of Hershey bars and Wrigley's gum. The greens grocer's with his displays of strange looking vegetables and Heinz beans, the hundreds of chil- dren, with their bowl haircuts playing tag, hide 'n seek, spinning tops, or-using up their American vocabulary to yell Hi, as we drove by. This particular street is in Nagasaki. lt could be duplicated however, anywhere in Japan. Some of the first to make the trip . . . to right: Curtiss, Weber, Hastings, Eich- wald, Wittich, Rousseau, Larkin, Mr. Rus- sell, Mr. Craig, Chief Garnett, Mr. Hoff- man, Mr. Shannon. Kneeling: Greenbush, Ferguson, Baxter, McCall, Goerhing.

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Shaft and sign at site of Atom Bomb explosion. Lt. Shannon takes a closer look Remnants of church bell tower. Page Forty One minute we were riding smoothly on a paved street, the next, we were bounc- ing and lurching over a pitted, deeply rutted dirt roadway. Thru the window we could see large chunks of broken con- crete mixed with the dirt. There had been a paved street here, but it had been ripped out and left in- pieces, which time and traffic had ground into the dirt. we noticed that the unpainted wooden buildings weren't so weathered, and that the signs on the stores were newer, fresh- er. Across the street, twisted and broken steel girders formed the rusty skeleton of what had been a mill or factory. lts peaked roof, a sagging jumbled network of broken steel fingers, pointing crazily at the sky. We learned later that this had been a steel mill. Now, there were no buildings at all. Only acres of raw, brown, naked -earth. Off to one side, in the distance, we could see two concrete smorkestacks, one straight and rigid, the other brokenly bent in the m-iddle. Our bus pulled into what would' so-me day be a park. Right now the trees were still saplings, the grass still bore the faint outlines of having been sod. The drive formed a tan circle of gravel around a low mound which was having trouble supporting a patch of grass and a few bushes. From it rose a painted white wood shaft in- scribed in black with Japanese characters. We stopped in front of a sign written in both American and Japanese . . On 9 August i945 at ll:OO A.M. an Atomic Bomb ex- ploded in the air just above here. Across the drive, tucked in a grove of saplings was a white hexagonal building, The Museum of the Atomic Bomb . lnside, there were pictures taken a day or so after the bomb had exploded showing the complete de- struction of those acres of bare earth we had seen. ln show cases which covered the walls there was mute evi- dence of the intense heat of the bomb. A coke bottle melted flat - pieces of glass and stone fused together -a shoe which had partially sunk into a heat softened chunk of concrete: there were watches and cloc-ks stoppgl at ll:OO and clothes heat bleached of their color. Our next stop was at the base of the hill which once had held the largest Catholic church in the Far East. All that was left now was a goodly portion of the bell tower and a section of a side wall. As we climbed the hill to have a look, children ran down to greet us, at the top, chil- dren were everywhere. Running, spinning tops, jumping rope, playing ball between the remains of the old church and the temporary frame school and church that had been put up to one side. lt sort of struck us as being one of those nice satires which nature does so well. Q