Everyone who knows the name Nagasaki most likely knows it because of the bombing, but it deserves to be known for far more than that. It was for centuries the most important Japanese gateway to the outside world, and many important discoveries, inventions and indeed the industrial revolution arrived here through Dejima Port. Most remarkable is the story of Thomas Blake Glover, a Scotsman who arrived here aged 21 and never went home. He introduced local Samurai clans to Western ideas, principally its 19th century industrialisation. His legacy is remembered in the magnificent mountain-top residence and gardens that give a stunning view over the river and its industrial zone, including the factory where Mitsubishi was launched in Japan.

It is today a beautiful, dynamic, thriving and exciting city, and of course a total contrast to that terrible day of August 9th, 1945, when the 2nd atomic bomb used in warfare was dropped on Nagasaki at 11:02, instantly killing some 70,000 people, and many more in later days, weeks, months and years. Nagasaki wasn't supposed to be bombed, but clouds obscured the original target of Kokura, now renamed Kitakyushu. Here are photos taken in June 2019, plus a few from the internet.