United States (after Sydney Greenstreet's character in The Maltese Falcon) was dropped on Nagasaki, forever changing the city's landscape. A mushroom cloud rose to an altitude of above the city. Within the museum is a history of the city before the bomb was dropped. The hypocenter of the explosion was the Urakami district, which was a traditionally rustic and isolated suburb. However, the population soared after the 1920s when the district was chosen as the site for munitions factories. An industrial zone was quickly created. Additionally, the Urakami district was home to the Nagasaki Medical College. When the bomb was dropped at 11:02 A.M. on August 9, 1945, the 20 neighborhoods within a one-kilometer radius of the hypocenter were completely destroyed by the heat flash and blast winds generated by the explosion. They were then reduced to ashes by the fires which followed. Within 2 km of the hypocenter, roughly 80% of the houses collapsed and burned. When the smoke cleared, the area was strewn with corpses. Reconstruction of the city proceeded slowly. It was not until the latter half of 1946 that the first emergency dwellings were provided to the communities. The need for buildings far surpassed the availabilities. As late as 1950, applications for corporate dwellings exceeded the availability ninety times. The national government of Japan created a war disaster reconstruction plan in November 1945 which projected a city concept which would abandon the old war industries and focus instead on a revival of foreign trade, shipbuilding, and the fishing industry. Today, the city is considered a peace city and has pledged itself to the mission of world peace. Inside the Museum The residents of Nagasaki consider it their duty to make sure the horrors which they experienced due to the atomic bombing are never repeated. Because of this, the museum is designed in such a way that the audience can see just what effect the bomb had on the city, the reconstruction, and the lasting effects of the atomic bomb. The museum opens with a room dedicated to the city as it was just before the bomb decimated Nagasaki. A clock which stopped at 11:02, the precise time the bomb hit the city, is also on display to demonstrate how so many people were killed in an instant. In the next section, visitors enter a room which shows Nagasaki just after the bombings. Included in this room