00:00:01 John Daub: Hello everybody, welcome to Nagasaki. This is the Peace Park. This is where they hold the ceremony every August 9th and remember what happened on that day. You guys are with me today and we're going to take a look around the Peace Park. There are lots of tourists coming through here. I've been here for about three hours. I came here early to do an interview. I'm actually making a main channel episode interviewing Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) to hear their stories, to make an episode out of it because I think it's important to preserve those stories. We're losing a lot of them.

00:00:39 John Daub: So it's a really important story. But while I'm here, I thought this is a great chance to take you around and show you the Nagasaki Peace Park. It's a really beautiful place but has a lot of history behind it. This is where I am. I'm going to show you the map. Let me bring you with me and show you exactly where we are. You can see there's Tokyo and Osaka. We're all the way down in Kyushu Island. This is a very far place to get to. It takes some time. You got to get on about a two-hour flight from Tokyo. But it's a beautiful city. This is where the Peace Park is, that blue spot. That's where I am right now. And you can see it's kind of an elevated park. It's up on a hill. And it's really beautiful. I mean, you can just see it's around the urban part of the city, but it really is a park up here.

00:01:34 John Daub: It's a very large clearing as well. They put a lot of chairs and have a lot of dignitaries that come to remember that day. We're also going to be walking in this episode down to the Hypocenter Park. So this is from right above. It was 500 meters up, or about 1,600 feet at Fat Man, the plutonium bomb that exploded in the air that destroyed the city 80 years ago this year. So we're going to walk over there and take a look at it. And I'll express my impressions as we go along.

00:02:12 John Daub: This is a picture. We're right at the outside of this park area. It's kind of incredible to see this. I can read just a little bit of it. The former Urakami branch of Nagasaki Prison. It was located 100 to 350 meters north of the atomic bomb hypocenter. And you could see it was just completely destroyed on that day. And there's going to be a lot of pictures along the way that take you back 80 years so that you can understand what happened afterwards. One of the big missions of this is where I did the interview inside of the Nagasaki Survivors Association. One of their missions is to get those stories out there, to share what happened to try to avoid nuclear war. And a lot of you know in December they won the Nobel Peace Prize, which is pretty incredible. Yokoyama-san, who I interviewed, went to the Peace Prize ceremony.

00:03:27 John Daub: You're going to see pictures as we walk around the park here. There's some similarities to Hiroshima I'm walking across here. You'll see the rainbow colors, the peace paper cranes all over. And I think that's a symbol from Hiroshima as well. I think making a thousand of them means that you'll live a long life. One thing that you notice when you come into Nagasaki that's very different from Hiroshima is all the churches around. Nagasaki was historically going back to the 17th century. There were a lot of Dutch, a lot of foreigners here. So there's also a lot of churches here. There were a lot of Catholics in this area. The Portuguese, I believe, also had set up base in Dejima (artificial island for foreign trade). That's where the Dutch were.

00:04:28 John Daub: In this part of Nagasaki, looking at the maps here, you can see the signs. The Urakami Cathedral, again Christian, was destroyed, completely destroyed in there. And there were a lot of Christians in Nagasaki. So a lot of people lost their lives. But it's interesting, they weren't Shinto Japanese. They were Christian Japanese. And they do exist here in Japan. People think that it's just Buddhist and Shinto, but that's not the case. You can see here's Nagasaki. Such a beautiful city, isn't it? It's on the water here with the mountains around it. It's just such a wonderful place. And it's said that it's mostly remembered internationally for being the place of the atomic bomb in 1945.

00:05:24 John Daub: There's a couple of attractions over here to this park. But I just wanted to show you how wide it is. And also of note, if you look around the area, you see it's just surrounded by mountains. In order to get, if you're driving into Nagasaki from the airport, you have to go through a tunnel to get to the city. And then you enter into the city. So there's always this kind of impact when I drive into Nagasaki, going through the tunnel. And then, wow, you're in a completely different world. You're in Nagasaki. And it really is in many ways.

00:05:59 John Daub: I've worked in many places. I've always, when I first came to Japan, I think my image of Japan was when I came to World War II, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you would think about the two. They're joined because the bomb was dropped here. And that's pretty much all I knew about Nagasaki. But the more I spent time here, the more I spent time in Japan, and I read the books about travel to here. You start realizing that there's a lot of other things. And now it's more in my mind, has less to do with war and more to do with like food, like the attractions. How's tempura about the seaside here, the port city. It has more to do with that and less to do with the war. So the longer you live here and the more you know about the attractions, the more it sort of starts to change from what it was.

00:07:00 John Daub: And I ate a couple of these yesterday. This is kakuni manju (braised pork bun). These are very famous in Nagasaki, probably Chinese inspired. But these are really good, these little sandwiches. There's some famous shops all over the city for this kakuni manju. Chinese food is also quite popular here because, you know, we're kind of close to China. So this is the port of call. A lot of Chinese ships are coming in with tourists.

00:07:28 John Daub: This remains shows part of a wall which surrounded the Urakami branch of the Nagasaki prison, which was located here when the A-bomb exploded. So this is the wall that's very close to the hypocenter. And you can see there's some discoloration down there. But it's hard to knock down a wall like this, especially a prison wall. They're made pretty strong so you don't get out. But it also offers pretty good protection. Not a lot can get in either.

00:08:15 John Daub: You'll find statues around them. A lot of them were donated from other countries, all around the world. This one coming from the Netherlands. And we have a lot of viewers from the Netherlands. So you can see from the city of Middelburg in the Netherlands. Sister city to Nagasaki. And it looks like a mother. And I've heard stories about this as well. Where mothers, when they heard the, saw the flash and the bang. The mothers would cover up their kids. Remember this was still during wartime. So they had bombing raids of Nagasaki before. And that's all the news at the time. The bombing raids and cities being destroyed by bombs. They just never expected that the bomb would be this big and destroy so much.

00:09:15 John Daub: And there's a fountain here that's really beautiful. It's kind of a chill, it's weird weather. Yesterday it was snowing. You could see the snow was coming down yesterday in Nagasaki. And this is where the cruise ships come in. I'm on the other side of the city. But I was looking out the window here. And you could see the weather was just so weird. It was, it would look like it could be sunny. But it wasn't. It was just awful like winter type weather last night. So it makes it kind of hard to film at this time. But it's kind of chilly right now actually. Cherry blossoms are supposed to be out soon. Yeah, champon (Nagasaki-style Chinese noodle soup) is the Chinese style noodle soup which is so good. I'll probably have that for lunch.

00:10:10 John Daub: So this fountain pretty much at the other end of the Peace Park. They have one in Hiroshima as well. But water is life. And you can see the surrounding mountains. Nagasaki is kind of south, very west of Tokyo. But it's got warmer weather. It's got a warmer climate. So you'll see these tropical looking trees all around.

00:11:01 John Daub: Tokyo is in the east. Nagasaki is in the west. But it looks like Japan goes north to south. But Japan goes kind of north and then goes west. So it's the geography of it. Inside Japan, we would say that Osaka is west Japan. And Tokyo is east Japan. But I think if you live outside of Japan you probably don't see it like that.

00:11:34 John Daub: I first came to Nagasaki in 1999. I took the station, this is going to sound crazy. But I took from, I was living in Nagoya. I took from Nagoya the local train. And it took me about 70 hours to get to Nagasaki. As I said, this might sound strange. But I loved riding the local trains. I'd bring a couple of books with me. And I would read the books riding from Nagoya. And when I got to here, it was a pretty good feeling. A sense of accomplishment. And that's when I got to see the Peace Park and the museum.

00:12:15 John Daub: Hello. YouTube. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, this is wonderful. It's called the Fountain of Peace. So let's read this here. When the atomic bomb exploded on August 9, 1945, thousands of people suffered terrible burns and died begging for water. Nagasaki City and the Council for World Peace and the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons constructed this Fountain of Peace with donations received from all over Japan and dedicated as an offering of water to the victims of the atomic bomb and a prayer for the repose of their souls. It is our ardent wish that you will remember the departed victims whilst visiting this fountain and that you will join us in striving for world peace. Mayors of Nagasaki. So, a lot of information. It was constructed in 1969 and renovated in 1985.

00:13:20 John Daub: Yeah, after the atomic bombs, there is, I know much more about the Hiroshima and I think that's one of the reasons why I am here to learn more about Nagasaki. But I know quite a lot about the Hiroshima bombings and there was, after the bombing, a black rain, which of course was some dangerous stuff in there, and the water was all over the place, all irradiated from the bomb so you couldn't drink the water despite being extremely thirsty. So there was that amazing, just awful thirst and that might be the worst feeling in the world. So when you think about the atomic bombs, one of the things that you have to think about and I think you don't get it when you watch, I was watching a lot of YouTube videos on Nagasaki and there just wasn't a lot on the interviews of the survivors or on about what it was like after the bomb, what was it like for people that were living here. So I wanted to get a sense of that, not just what happened, the facts. I wanted to get more about what did people go through, what was that experience like.

00:14:33 John Daub: So I think it's really important, this is a huge episode. And when I talked with Yokoyama-san, there was a couple of parts where, I mean, we're both kind of in tears. I'm probably going to have to cut out some of this stuff, but it's one of the hardest things is to sit and listen to history that you know is going to be brutal, but you need to hear it because then you don't forget it. And I think a lot of the videos showing the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki don't really get into that part of it and it's really important to do that. So that's what this episode is about, I guess it's protecting, preserving history so we have this. And I don't know if I'm the right person to make this kind of an episode, I've done it in the past, but something in me tells me that I should do that.

00:15:29 John Daub: This is beautiful, look at that. But you can see we're kind of elevated up on a hill. There are people that were looking at me and stopping me. I have to be perfectly honest, right now the reputation of YouTube and social media is not very good. So what I'm doing is something that's... People know about what's been going on, it's been in the Japanese news, so as long as I have a big smile, everything's going to be probably okay, but it's kind of a tough time with all the nuisance streamers as a result. But Nagasaki, you're going to see a bunch of tourists walking by here. Certainly when you look at the ruins, the pictures, I have a lot of pictures from the US Army that's been declassified and made into the public domain, so I got a lot of that to add into this episode. But you're going to see a lot of that. It doesn't look like the same place. It's just amazing. If you live here, it's certainly a shock.

00:16:32 John Daub: And for Yokoyama-san, that was one of the things I asked her, because she was very young. She got a chance to live here and see it being rebuilt. And that was something I think that was very interesting, something that you'll get a chance to hear in the video, but it's very interesting to hear about how the city went from that to this. It's just incredible. A lot of European cities are the same. After getting destroyed from World War II. Here we got another tour group coming in here. I didn't see there was an escalator. We're now walking over to the hypocenter park.

00:17:10 John Daub: You get a chance to do that. I also saw the Nagasaki Shinkansen going by. I think it goes by like once an hour. It doesn't connect up with Fukuoka, so it's somewhat pointless at the moment. But it looks like the tour guide's showing everybody about Japanese vending machines. This is funny to watch. It's funny to watch a tourist learning about Japanese vending machines. It's kind of neat to see. I'm really cold. It's funny to see the tour guides showing them how to push the buttons. Oh, here's the train. Check it out. Street cars are really nice here. A lot of the people that are coming here, it's not like they've gone through Tokyo to get here. There are a lot of people that come to Nagasaki by cruise ship, by big, massive cruise ships. One of them just docked this morning.

00:18:35 John Daub: When I woke up, I looked out and I saw that there was a massive cruise ship there. Oh, here goes a train right now. I think you'll see it. They're kind of neat to see. And it also makes driving in Nagasaki really somewhat stressful because you've got these street cars to compete with. There's a baseball stadium over there, which is really beautiful. I drove here, so it's different than if you come by train. They put up on the riverside here, the Urakami River. Track and field. I mean, you can have the Olympics here. There's a baseball stadium, municipal swimming pool. Hey, Nagasaki 2036, or is that... Actually, that's Australia, right?

00:19:56 John Daub: This is the Hypocenter Park. And I don't remember coming here my first time, so it's been a while. Now the sun is coming out. When the sun is out, it feels really nice. When the sun is gone... There's just a bite in the air, really chilly. I'm scouting this out as I go along as well. Okay, here's some more pictures. Okay, there's the monolith. So we'll go take a look at that. Here's a couple of pictures. Maybe they have set up the historical scene for you here. It is a nice looking park. It's a nice looking city park.

00:20:48 John Daub: All right, remember these right here. So these stone lanterns at Shotokuji Temple, located about 1.5 kilometers south-southwest of the hypocenter. I guess these were moved here, because this is the hypocenter. The atomic bomb blast occurred at 11:02 a.m. on August 9th. And this is like... This picture is... It's fused into the metal, so the weather won't get it. But you'll notice the thing that they've done here, which is great, is it's not just in Japanese, but everything is also in English for internationals. That's really important, because the city of Nagasaki really wants you, if you do come to explore the history from 80 years ago, from the atomic bombing, they want you to remember it so that those, especially young ones, when they become decision makers and perhaps in positions of power, they can remember the impact that war has. And I think that's such a huge responsibility that the city must feel, having been the last place where atomic weapons were used.

00:22:11 John Daub: So you see a lot of images here. The Hypocenter, the atomic blast. Let's take a quick look at this. So it talks about 11:02 a.m. on August 9th. An atomic bomb exploded 500 meters above this spot. The black stone monolith to the right of this plaque marks the hypocenter, the fierce blast. Wind heat rays reaching several thousand degrees. The deadly radiation generated by the explosion reduced the city to ruins. About one-third of Nagasaki City was destroyed and 150,000 people killed or injured. And that might include, after the bomb, after many years from leukemia and other things associated with it, it was said that at the time this area would be devoid of vegetation for 75 years, they said. Now the Hypocenter remains as an international peace park and a symbol of aspirations of world harmony. So they said nothing would grow here for 75 years and look at it today. The spirit of Nagasaki certainly defied that.

00:23:15 John Daub: And there's some flowers left up at the monolith there. So this is, this point is significant and these circles are quite significant. The atomic bomb of Nagasaki did not explode like when it hit the ground, it exploded above the ground. So directly at this point at 11:02 a.m. 500 meters into the sky, which is pretty high, the atomic bomb detonated. It's about 1,600 feet. It's pretty high and there was a bright flash in the sky and you heard the ting dong, like lightning. It was louder than anything you can imagine, the sound waves probably broke glass and then all that force came down onto this spot and then it hit here and then the waves went out and there was a Japanese surveyor that came and assessed how the damage was done and they saw the trees, how they were knocked down, the ones at the hypocenter stood up straight and the ones maybe about 400 or 500 meters away, they were all bent over depending on how close they were to the hypocenter. So you can see those bands here.

00:24:57 John Daub: There's another photo. So more damage because it exploded up in the air? Yeah, absolutely. And the bad stuff does travel much further as a result. Okay, so this is a pretty interesting photo. This is the Urakami Cathedral wall, approximately 500 meters northwest of the hypocenter. The wall, I guess it's, they brought it over here. So this is the relocated portion right here in this picture. That's what you see right there. So we'll go back to that in a second. Let's go take a look at this. So this is about half a kilometer. What is that like a third of a mile away? It's pretty close. You can see. Yeah, there's some discoloration for sure. 80 years is a lot of time to pass.

00:26:20 John Daub: But the Urakami Cathedral, again, there were tens of thousands of Christians, Catholics that were living in Nagasaki part of this congregation. And they also, most of them died. Just incredible. It's just, in that flash and that bang, in the center. They say 40,000 people in an instant, gone. Just think about that. It's just awful. And it's, you know, it's important to remember the impact. You can't toss it around. So, got that little bit of tape right there, but, so easily nuclear war. You just can't toss it around saying that because you have to understand what you would lose.

00:27:05 John Daub: The Urakami Cathedral was located on a small hill about 500 meters northeast of the atomic bomb hypocenter. Construction of the church was started in 1895 and completed in 1914 through donations and voluntary labor service by Catholic believers. In 1925, the bell towers at the church entrance also reached completion. The explosion of the atomic bomb at 11:02 a.m. August 9th, 1945 destroyed Urakami Cathedral, the grandest church in East Asia at the time. Only the broken church wall remains. A portion of the southwest wall was brought here to make new way for the construction of a new church building in 1958. The stone statues on the columns depict Francis Xavier and his apostles were reinforced for safety. Nagasaki City installs this plaque as a prayer for the repose of the souls of the atomic bomb victims and to ensure that this tragedy is never repeated.

00:28:33 John Daub: One month later, the painting shows a statue of the... [inaudible]. And by the way, there is actually a signed thanksgiving plaque on the wall of the building. Thank you! Thank you! I can't tell you how much... I feel... for this particular episode to do a really good job with it so it's going to be something it puts a lot of effort in over the next couple of months. I probably will be back here one more time. I think this is a kind of story that just takes time.

00:29:15 John Daub: You go there, the last time I was here was in 2018. I can't tell you about it because I signed an NDA but I was only, I could tell you this, I was on a cruise ship with a bunch of A-listers, by A-listers I mean Hollywood A-listers and I got a chance to introduce Japan to them and then the ship docked in Nagasaki and I got off but I joined them in China and that's all I can say, at least for now. The monument over there has drawn a lot of tourists so my, the cruise ship docked in Nagasaki. I got off and they, I got a taxi to the airport directly but I stopped actually, no you know what, I told the cruise ship to stop off at, that's right, not like remembering the last time I was here in Nagasaki 2018. After I got off of the cruise ship I asked the taxi they said you take this taxi anywhere you want and I said okay so I took it to Nagasaki Station and I did some live streams on this channel from 2018 in front of Nagasaki Station when the Shinkansen was still under construction.

00:30:43 John Daub: So this is the two live streams that were on this channel you can go back to look at the history of it. That's what I love doing the live streams because it really is a record of everything. But I'm gonna look at how bad the weather is so I'm gonna start walking back in about a minute but the hypocenter park is really something that you have to see on the way to the Peace Park which is up on the hill. We're going to go back up to the Peace Park but there's the hypocenter right there that black monolith and they, Urakami Cathedral Wall. And I'll be back here tomorrow to film it, but I have one more Hibakusha survivor to interview tomorrow. And he lives about an hour and a half away from the city, so it's going to be a long day. The weather is not making it really easy to do all this. It's been really crazy weather.

00:31:40 John Daub: 1945, August 9, 11:02 a.m. You can see the time and the date stamped on the statue over there. That's a great question. Anonymous Travel Vids writes in here, this is a wonderful question. Does Nagasaki have a different vibe from Hiroshima? I absolutely does. I think that's such a great question. As a Catholic, those church ruins were particularly moving when I visited that park. Nagasaki is where quite a few Christians were martyred by the shogunate, yes, including the patron saint of the Philippines, Saint Lorenzo Ruiz, yes. There were a lot.

00:32:29 John Daub: I did the John Manjirō story as well, and after he returned to Japan from the United States, many people say that he had converted to become a Christian. So when he came here to Nagasaki, one of the things that they did was to try to get him to make sure before they let him go and become Japanese again. Because if you ever left Japan, you were executed. Any Japanese who left Japan was executed until the Meiji Restoration, so Japanese didn't travel outside the country, and nobody could come in. They brought a cross to Manjirō and told him to stomp on the cross, destroy the cross. And he did it. He wasn't particularly married. He did it to what he had to survive. And when he did that, it was the way that he had to prove to the Japanese that he wasn't Christian, although I think he was.

00:33:26 John Daub: But he went to church with Captain Whitfield. And the other question, this is a great question. I'm going to go to the vending machine and get a drink. Because of the large, so many churches, just at noon, about ten minutes before I started this live stream, I could hear bells all over the city ringing at the noontime church bells. And that was, it made me feel like I was in Europe. There are places in Nagasaki that make you feel very much like you're in Europe. And I'm going to take you to one of them tomorrow, or tomorrow night. And we're going to do a night walk. And a day walk. And I'm going to show you, I think there's a place called Glover Garden (historic hillside houses) that's really scenic, not far away from the cruise ship terminal.

00:34:20 John Daub: That's one of the newer streetcars going by there. We're going to get a vending machine drink over there, try to warm up. Wow, John, thanks for bringing us to such an important history, not only Japan's history, but the world's history as well. I think that's the one thing we have to remember. Hiroshima was the first place where atomic weapons were used. And Nagasaki, maybe even more important, was the last place. And I think the last place is really significant because that can change. And I think Nagasaki wears that really heavily, I think. They really feel it. And one of the reasons why they're so vocal is because we've got a lot of, well, we've still got survivors. It's just the numbers are dwindling. So those that remember.

00:35:22 John Daub: All right, what do we got here? Oh, there's the rainbow coffee. This one was really good. Let's go with the rainbow, huh? Get some Boss coffee. Shout out to Tommy Lee Jones. You all know what I mean, right? Tommy Lee Jones is the one who supports the, he's always in all the ads. You know, when I think of rainbows, I have to be honest with you, I think of Hawaii. So that's what I'm thinking of right now. Give me some Hawaiian warmth. Oh, Hawaiian warmth. Oh, Hawaii. It feels so nice. Tommy Lee is not in any of the ads right now. Oh, this feels so good. Thank you guys. It's really hot.

00:36:45 John Daub: All right, we're going up to the Peace Park right now for those that are joining us live. This is the Nagasaki Peace Park. We were just at the Hypocenter. Tomorrow I'm going to be going to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, or I might be going there later this afternoon, actually. I've got a permit to film inside there anytime between now and then. I'm going to be filming inside of there. I won't bring you live, but you'll see in the main channel episode. We went around the Hypocenter Park here, and then now we're going to walk up to here and then end the stream. And I parked my car here. So thank you so much for taking care of the parking. It's very nice of you.

00:37:23 John Daub: All right, this time we're going to go up the escalators because anytime you have a park that has escalators, that's really cool. The reason why they have escalators, do you guys know? This is kind of an important thing here. This is a parking lot. Do you know why they have escalators in the park? Which seems kind of weird. It's because there are a lot of the Hibakusha, the people that are, you have to be over 80 to have been born now. A lot of them are old, so they need the escalators to get up to the ceremony, really.

00:39:14 John Daub: So on August 9th, you have a lot of people that come. A lot of them are over the age of 80. A lot of them. And they come and sit for this. The prime minister comes, typically, and the dignitaries, people from all the embassies come. And the Hibakusha, the survivors, come. And I don't think that they would be happy to walk up all these steps to get up to the celebration. So these escalators are really great. However, with that said, I want to tell you something about the people of Japan, but also the people of Nagasaki. They might be like 100 or 90, but a lot of these people can walk. They are in good shape. I'm so impressed. And this is another one. Look at this. This escalator also does. It's a little flat. It's not as long as the other one, but it's... People in Japan are in good shape. Those that are in their 70s, 80s, 90s.

00:40:27 John Daub: I think after World War II, that's when salary men started smoking and drinking. And I don't know. I don't think Japanese are as healthy as they were. So people are living really long right now in Japan. And this is my own opinion. But I don't think that the next generation after the war is going to be living quite as long. The way they're smoking and drinking for work makes me think like they're going to live a lot less. So I think the world's longest living people might... It doesn't seem like Japan's going to be up on that list for much longer. The way that, in particular, men drink and smoke in the offices in the cities. It's not very good. But anyways, I think though that people do live within their means more and eat within... Don't eat more than they need.

00:41:16 John Daub: I'm going to go to the car. I'm going to go to the car now. So if you don't mind, join me to the car. We're going to have some coffee and I'll take some questions from you guys. Here we're back at the Peace Park. So this is a pretty good tour walking around the center here. It is really chilly. I don't have a down jacket or anything like that. But I get a feeling my spider senses are tingling, telling me that I better get to the car. Because the blue sky is over there now. It's weird, right? That's blue sky. And on the other side, it just looks typical spring weather. A low pressure system came in. My flight, they said I might not even have made it into here.

00:42:06 John Daub: So these statues were donated from other countries, from artists around the world. This is very significant as well. This is the bell that chimes at 11:02 a.m. on the anniversary, the remembrance of that day. My first Only in Japan episode was the restaurant vending machine. Wow, that is a classic. That's a tough image right there. So the man that I'm interviewing tomorrow, the Hibakusha survivor, has a story. He lives a little bit outside, about 10 or 12 kilometers away from the hypocenter. So he was quite a ways away. But his story is different. And I guess that's the story. I got a chance to, he did an interview in Japanese. Of course it's going to be Japanese, for a Japanese channel, so there's no subtitles or anything. But I got a chance to listen to that. And yeah, I mean, it's hard not to tear up when you hear this stuff. You read about what people lost. It's like this in any war. But I think it's important that you hear about it from the atomic bomb, on why this should never be used again.

00:43:51 John Daub: We just didn't know. In 1945, it seems like we knew, but we didn't really know the large scale of how bad this stuff would be. But it's really starting to rain now. But, oh, it's cold. See the rain coming down? Okay, let's get to the car. There's a coffee shop in there too. Oh my gosh. Did we time this right or what? I think it's like snow. It's cold. I'm going to idle for a little bit. I hope you don't mind. Don't tell everybody that I'm idling. I guess it's something you're not supposed to do. I don't know. All right. Itadakimasu. That's good coffee. That rainbow coffee is really good. You can see the rain's now starting to come down. So we timed this pretty good.

00:45:34 John Daub: I'm going to go back to the hotel for a little bit. I can come back here to film. I wanted to say, did you guys have any questions? Before we leave here? I think it's important. The difference between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just to go back to the question, the reason why a lot of people go to Hiroshima is because it's on the Shinkansen line. It's just really easy to get to. It's close to your entry into Japan, which is Tokyo or Osaka. But I think if you come to Nagasaki, you're going to learn about the atomic bomb. I think it's important to understand the history from World War II, to learn what you studied in textbooks and put into real life. I think it's an amazing thing, especially for kids to learn about this kind of stuff. And maybe not young kids, maybe teenagers.

00:46:26 John Daub: But Hiroshima had a smaller bomb. This one was much bigger. But the loss of life, I think impact of it was reduced because of the surrounding mountains and the landscape and geography. The geography of Nagasaki. So it could have been much, much worse. And that's even hard to believe. The more I dig into this, the more I'm just, you know, it's really heartbreaking to talk about it. But I'll discuss it in the main channel episode. The Nagasaki, I guess it was called Fat Man. It was a plutonium-based atomic bomb, not a uranium one. It was much bigger. And it could have done so much more damage. Nagasaki wasn't even the intended target. It was Kokura, which is just north of Fukuoka. I've been there several times in Kokura. I have friends there.

00:47:34 John Daub: So they tried to pick places that hadn't been too bombed as well from the air raids. Toyama was bombed so heavy. There were a lot of places in Japan that were just really bombed. The war was over once America got some of the islands that were close to Japan and the Pacific front. Once they could get from Saipan, they could get flights and do bombing runs, it was over. And Japan, the real, because I know that Americans see the war differently. And I was interviewed after I interviewed Yokoyama-san. And it was a one-man show. It was a one-hour interview. It was really long. You can't cut her off. You have to let her just talk. And also in the room with me was Nagasaki Broadcasting, NBC. They said, when I got the permit to interview the survivor, Yokoyama-san, they also said, would you mind if NBC joined us? And I go, NBC? You mean like Lester Holt's NBC? Yeah. Okay. And they said, no, no, no. Nagasaki Broadcasting Corporation. I'm like, okay. That's even better.

00:49:02 John Daub: Nagasaki Broadcasting was really helpful. And this isn't rain. This is hail. I don't know if you could see it, but that's ice. It's ice that's melting now. Do you see it? These are like little hail balls. They're bouncing off of the roof of the car. Do you see it? It's hail. You can see the hail on the road. Little balls of ice. It's not very big. Now you can make iced coffee. Yesterday, I saw something freaky. It was snowing yesterday and there was lightning. I saw two, one of them, I'm not quite sure, but one of them definitely was a flash of lightning. And we heard... I know for sure. I know for sure because I heard the thunder afterwards. I've never seen lightning in a snowstorm before. And yesterday I saw that. There's some freaky, weird weather that started yesterday. So my trip here is not the best. That's why I might have to come back here. I can't film in this.

00:50:48 John Daub: Snow lightning yesterday. I saw that in Nagasaki. Now, it wasn't like a blizzard, but the snow was falling. And then I had lightning. So I didn't know that it... Thunder snow. I didn't know that existed. I don't think this is typical weather. I don't think it's going to... I'll give you another sakura update later, but I don't think that this is anything unusual. It goes like four days hot, four days cold. Four days hot, four days cold. And we just happen to be like four days like super cold right now. I'm really appreciative of the super chats because I'm looking at the parking meter here. The parking lot is full as well. But yeah, the sakura are probably going to be out probably close to on time. It's been warm and it's been cold. It's going to go... It goes like that every year. So it's nothing big here. Nothing unusual.

00:51:59 John Daub: You can see the Nagasaki here. The airport is in the... There's the airport right there in the middle of the harbor, the lake. I guess it's a lake. Do you know Dejima? Yeah. The Dejima was... I believe it was all destroyed in the bombings. But they've recreated it. They've done a pretty good job with it. And I might try to bring you there in a live stream if I can. They also have Gunkanjima (Battleship Island), which is the deserted island that was in that James Bond movie many years ago.

00:52:36 John Daub: So Nagasaki... If you guys... First of all, as somebody who's lived here in Japan for so many years, I don't see Nagasaki and Hiroshima as being like... They're like completely different cities, but they're connected to a lot of people outside of Japan based on the atomic bombings. And I get that, you know, because I was the same way when I got here to Japan. But what I can tell you is that Nagasaki has got a lot of natural attractions, a lot of beauty here. I drove a lot of the prefecture yesterday. I got a lot around. It's a wonderful place to live, and I said this is like a place I could see myself living here in Nagasaki. It's really beautiful. And it's so cutoff of the like the main artery of Japan off of the Shinkansen. They're going to have a Shinkansen here in a couple of... Maybe it'll be completed in a couple of years. I think half of it is done. It doesn't quite go all the way to Fukuoka yet.

00:53:39 John Daub: Ok, it stopped now. That's the weird weather we've been having. Goes on and it stops. But Nagasaki is such a beautiful place. I can see myself living here. The people are friendly. They look a lot more relaxed than Tokyo of course. I turn off the idling. Let's keep the heat in. But I think that there's a big difference. One of my favorite places to live in Japan, I've lived in 16 different cities. I used to, I would move every three months for the job I did my first seven years here. I moved 16 times over that. Sometimes it was less than three months, sometimes maybe it was more. But I lived in Hiroshima I think it was two years overall. And that might be my favorite city to live in in Japan because of it was a city and it was on the Shinkansen line and it had this sea, beautiful inlet sea. The food was delicious. The people were friendly. It had the vibe of the countryside with a city feel.

00:54:56 John Daub: You know inside of Tokyo you have Shibuya, Shinjuku. You have Oedo, Ueno. Imagine just taking Ueno and that's Hiroshima, right? That's sort of how I felt. You have everything that you need right there. You don't need to go to the other places. You can get everything off of Hondori (shopping arcade) and central Hiroshima. You can go to Miyajima which there's an island nearby with the deer. It was a great place to live. 15 minutes on the train you're at Miyajima off to the ferry terminal for weekends. You could go there, hang out on Miyajima with the deer, right? So I loved living in Hiroshima. It was my favorite place probably of the 16 cities I've lived in. Nagasaki has that same kind of a feel to me but it's just different because you have these churches and cathedrals all over the place. So there are a lot of churches all over Nagasaki and it gives it a different feel. The food is different here as well and also the weather, the trees kind of you can feel that it's definitely more West.

00:56:03 John Daub: It's a different city and as I said there's something like it's something I don't know makes it feel like it's special because you got to go through a mountain to get here. You have to go through a tunnel to get to this place that's surrounded by mountains. So it kind of shuts it off to like, I think in the olden days the only way you can get to Nagasaki was like boat or something because you'd have to go over the mountain. You have to hike over the mountain to get here. The fact that now they have a tunnel that you can get through but if the tunnel didn't exist it makes it kind of like they shut off separated from the rest of the country kind of community to it and that makes it special in a way as well. And also the one thing that Hiroshima doesn't have that Nagasaki does is that history to being one of the ports of Japan where the international community could enter. I think it was the only one for a very long time in the 17th century when the Dutch came and the ships the Europeans had the ships that could come out here they could only enter through Nagasaki so that history is here.

00:57:05 John Daub: Somebody said that Kirin beer was brewed here first as well so the foreigners that expat community here um they did a lot of good things for uh they did they helped to make what is Nagasaki city so it's influenced not just by Japanese culture but it's influenced by European culture and you get that feeling in Nagasaki this mix of European like old European and Japanese culture and it's influenced by Japanese culture and Chinese culture too because there's some Chinese culture here mixed in too. It was like um if Japan is a melting pot if there's any place where Japan is a melting pot anywhere in Japan it would be Nagasaki. This is the melting pot so you feel that here based on uh the architecture the the food the feeling and that those castella cakes (sponge cakes) are so good. I found one that they had in chocolate you guys told me yesterday in the live stream about the chocolate ones they're so good I bought an eight pack and I ate four of them.

00:58:16 John Daub: The Dutch could only live on Dejima yeah the island out there so they could they were they were um only couldn't but I don't know what it was maybe it was at the Meiji Restoration but there was a time where they could come on onto shore and that's a lot of these churches started to proliferate um as a result I think Japanese were converted into Christianity uh lot of them came out of Nagasaki Kobe as well as one of the Yokohama Kobe and Nagasaki are the three port cities that were very that were the most influenced by and Hakodate to a lesser extent later on in the 19th century after Commodore Perry opened up Hakodate you could see the foreign influence in particular up there. I haven't eaten anything all day so that's why I'm gonna go get my lunch so these super chats are really helpful I'm gonna go back to the hotel warm up and then come back here in the afternoon maybe or just do everything here tomorrow. Yeah I'm leaving Friday night to go back to Tokyo so I do have Friday as well but the weather is just not good enough to film.

00:59:33 John Daub: It's kind of like a shogun type of thing you know it can't be helped part of this part of this filming um for the the episodes I make you really you really are um you know impacted by the weather and that kind of stuff live streams are what they are so there's the big statue on at the park there it's a good parking spot actually it's pretty good part I'm I'm kind of impressed with myself I found a pretty good parking spot here get the freaky there all right everybody thanks for watching thanks for the questions this is too freaky what normalize normalize what it's because of the light and the it's trying to compensate anyways thanks so much for joining me on this trip for almost an hour here.

01:00:31 John Daub: I'm going to be taking you on another trip around maybe Glover Garden or there's another place I want to take you in Nagasaki if the weather clears up I wanted to go see the night view tonight but I'm going to be in Nagasaki for half of the night for two days and I might have to wait until tomorrow there's a very high chance that I come back here in April or May so you know this isn't the last time I'll be in Nagasaki but this is the type of episode I want to do a really good job with and time to get an iPhone 17 Pro maybe I don't know those Andreas look pretty good but the bottom line is like um yeah I want to do a really good job with this episode and I can't say thank you enough to those that are Patreon supporters so this is all this is all done by Patreon um this is this month's postcard it's a Mito this is from the garden and Mito um the plum blossoms so that that I actually sent those out right before I came here to Nagasaki to Patreon supporters so thank you so much for supporting the channel on Patreon I really appreciate it and the super chats here and everything the memberships and everything that allows me to come out here and do a slow a really good job with producing this episode.

01:01:46 John Daub: Meaning I I'll come back here when the weather's good I'll be able to take it because I want this episode to be something that people can watch for years and years and get something out of it I'm sure that there are other videos like it but this this one's going to be ours right this is this our our episode so got to do the best job can from it um there's no reason to rush it uh and it'll get done when I get done but it'll be released in July the interviews are the hardest part I think not just because it's going to take the most time to edit but because my heart is in my stomach each time I listen and I can understand what she's saying it really really really really hits you hard and I think that's what it's supposed to it's supposed to all right everybody take care I'll see you I'll see you either later on today stop it all right I'll see you later on today or I'll see you tomorrow morning for a live stream um gotta come back if the weather's good I'll come back to the park if not I'll probably take you another area and then I'm driving out to one of the survivors houses and I'm going to be in July the interviews are going to be there and when that's done I'm going to come back to Nagasaki try to film some more and uh yeah if you're in Nagasaki you can send me a message maybe I can meet up with you here at the Peace Park tomorrow or the day after tomorrow that'd be really nice all right don't let the rain come down I know right I got my fingers crossed everything's going to be good all right bye from Nagasaki see you in the next episode.