It was over 57 years ago, on August 9th, when almost 74,000 people were killed instantly, and similar numbers were injured in the Nagasaki blast.

Nick Snijder, a prisoner of war, was slave-labouring for his Japanese captors in a coalmine nearby when the electricity failed and the air became almost unbreathable.

"Some people are sceptical when I say I was under the bomb, but its true," Nick says. It was two hours before he and the other prisoners scrambled out of the mine on a hill overlooking the city.

All was unnaturally quiet and still.

"We saw black smoke billowing into the sky and hanging over the city - we thought fuel and ammunition dumps had gone up," Nick says.

It soon became obvious that something major had happened. "The Japanese guards didn't prod us with bayonets or rifle butts that night."

The next day the prisoners were told the war was over.

It was almost one month before Nick could enter the city to be shipped out of Japan by the Americans. "What I saw was beyond comprehension - houses on the outskirts of Nagasaki were flattened or "blown out.

"I saw Japanese people fossicking among the ruins of their homes picking up what little they could. The city was flattened for as far as I could see. Only corners of buildings occasionally stuck above the rubble."

Nick heard how the blast had imprinted the image of two men on scaffolding onto the wall they had been painting.

"The ground was like a glacier in places - it had melted in the blast and then cooled again. One chap told me he had seen hand-carts piled high with charred bodies," Nick says sadly. No warnings about possible radiation dangers were given, but Nick is fit and robust and says he has not suffered any ill effects from the bomb. He attributes his failing eyesight to poor nutrition and overwork during the "prime growing years", between 17 and 21 when he was toiling for the Japanese. When liberated he weighed only 39 kilograms (6.5 stone) - a far cry from the 100kg (16 stone) his large frame started with.

It was not until American sailors told Nick about the new weapon that he knew what had caused the destruction of Nagasaki, and ended his three and a half years of imprisonment after the sinking of his ship, the Dutch cruiser "De Ruyter", off the island of Sulawesi, near Borneo. He was one of only 50 survivors.

These days he can look back on POW life fairly philosophically. He bears no malice and holds no grudges, and indeed is fascinated with many facets of Japanese culture.

Island prison camp life was serious and could be brutal. Three prisoners who attempted to escape were publicly beheaded. He says that the Japanese guards were like characters out of a Charles Dickens story - extremely good, or extremely bad. A lenient guard would flick prisoners on the nose for any misdemeanour - a sadistic one would belt them with a steel-weighted rope.

In the camp, Nick honed his cooking skills - trying to make the burnt rice and grass which was thrown at the prisoners edible, which was not easy.

After seven months in this camp, Nick was told that he was going to Japan - "and I wasn't happy about that." There he slaved for over three years in the Nagasaki shipyards, where he was forced to become a riveter, a blacksmith and a plater.

"You learnt the skills very quickly when a Japanese guard would belt you with a club for anything done wrong."

Morale was generally good, but there were some who could not take it, fighting a long and bitter struggle to the death.

Nick's life following the war has been worlds away from the horrors of Nagasaki and the brutality of forced labour.

Arriving in New Zealand in 1952, among other things he pursued his lifelong interest in cooking. From 1972 to 1981 he and his wife Pauline owned the country's northernmost tearooms at Waitiki Landing, 21 kilometres south of Cape Reinga. They have two children.

Nick says that he would like to go back to Japan, to experience the aesthetic feeling and mood, and would have no qualms about revisiting Nagasaki. However, he is concerned about Japanese business practices and a lack of regard for the environment.

"In the interests of expanding their economy they lack social and environmental responsibility," he says.

Nick hopes today for a more peaceful world, brought about by improved communication, and he is doing his bit - he's learning Japanese.