Nagasaki
When Portuguese explorers first landed at Nagasaki in the mid-sixteenth century it was little more than a village, home to a handful of fishermen making their living from the sea. After the Portuguese established a trade relationship with the feudal lords of the area, however, the Portuguese would look to establish a port under their control at Nagasaki. As a consequence of the establishment of the trading port, Nagasaki quickly grew into a full-fledged city, predominantly populated by Portuguese traders and missionaries, as well as Japanese converts to Catholicism.
After Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the seventeenth century the shoguns came to see European encroachment into their society as a threat. In an effort to neutralize this threat they expelled most European traders and missionaries from the country. Japanese ports were also closed to European trade, with one exception. Dutch traders were granted permission to operate out of the port at Nagasaki, leaving a small window open to the West. Japan would only abandon this isolationist policy in the mid-nineteenth century in response to threats from the American Commodore Perry.
While this American intervention prompted Japan to once again open itself to trade with outsiders, it also precipitated a crisis that would end in the collapse of the shogunate during the Meiji Restoration. Thereafter Japan radically reoriented its approach to the rest of the world. Rather than simply accepting foreign influence passively, Japan looked to establish itself as an imperial power. In 1896 it would defeat China and secure control of Korea. In 1905 it solidified its sphere of influence thereby annihilating a Russian fleet at Tsushima. 1937 saw a Japanese invasion of China, and in 1941 Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would ultimately lead to the destruction of Nagasaki. By 1945 the United States had largely driven Japanese forces back to their home islands. In the interim, however, the Manhattan Project had succeeded in producing and testing an atomic bomb. Hoping to end the war without resorting to a costly invasion, President Truman elected to put the atomic bomb to use. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later it dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, flattening the northern end of the city, killing 35,000, and prompting Japan to capitulate.