Niigata, with a population of nearly half a million people, is a big city—the twenty-third largest in Japan according to the Japan Almanac. An industrial city with a major port, it was flattened by bombing during World War II. Niigata was, however, rather lucky that the weather was clear over Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, as it was one of the alternate targets for the first atom bomb.
