It’s Always 11:02AM at Nagasaki Peace Park and the Atomic Bomb Museum

It wasn’t the bombs that got me. Or the rubble and melted glass. Not even the articles of burnt clothing or pictures of the dead moved me as much.

It was the clock pictured above – its hands stopped at the precise moment of the blast – that made me feel the magnitude of that day. Twisted, destroyed, its face partly melted from the intense heat, I stood staring at that clock for several minutes before walking into the exhibit. Like many people in my generation or younger, I had learned about World War II and the bombing of Nagasaki in school. I had read books and seen the documentaries but never did I feel so close to that moment as I did then, standing there, looking at the hands of that clock. The thought of it sent chills down my spine.

Because at precisely 11:02AM on August 9, 1945, the world, as far as Nagasaki was concerned, stopped.