Attendees pray for the victims of the atomic bombings during a ceremony at Nagasaki's Peace Park on Aug. 9, 2025, the 80th anniversary of the attack. | REUTERS

At 11:02 a.m. on Aug. 9, 1945, the U.S. atomic bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” detonated 500 meters above Nagasaki, unleashing a blast that engulfed about a square mile of the city and killed an estimated 40,000 to 75,000 people almost instantly.

What remains today, along with more than 15,000 living survivors, are the ordinary objects left behind by those who died: a fountain pen and a metal lunch box, melted by the heat but still bearing the names of their owners; a shadow on a wall where, in a flash of light, a human being was vaporized.

The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum — homespun and intimate — is a collection of artifacts from ordinary lives. Its moving exhibits include household objects, photographs and firsthand accounts from ordinary citizens, as well as Korean forced laborers and prisoners of war who were in the city when the bomb was dropped. One account comes from an Australian prisoner of war who describes his torture and credits the bomb with his survival while remembering fellow prisoners who died in the blast, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

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