The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is a museum located in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, in central Hiroshima, Japan, dedicated to documenting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in World War II. The museum was established in August 1955 with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall.
A focal point of that is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It sits across the Motoyasu River from the famous Atomic Bomb Genbaku Dome, which withstood a direct blast from the bomb.
The museum is elevated on a series of columns that overlooks greenery in every direction where there was once ruin and desolation.
Designed by Kenzō Tange and inaugurated in 1955, the museum is now a national and international symbol for peace.
Evocative exhibits at the museum include a blistered and fused tricycle that a 4-year-old boy was riding during the blast that burned him to death. Similar moments are invoked through artifacts as small as a wristwatch or a lunch box carried by a student who perished at school.
These give a sense of the “pain and suffering of the victims and their bereaved families
Photos, documentary films, nightmarish drawings by survivors, scientific explanations of the explosion and artifacts such as melted glass and charred clothing hint at the unimaginable.
“This museum was established by the city of Hiroshima to convey the reality of the atomic bombing to the world, and contribute to the total abolition of nuclear weapons, and realization of lasting world peace,”
The museum is where visitors and survivors alike come together to learn more about attack and reflect on its consequences and humanity’s future. It has attracted millions of visitors to the city and has consistently been the top rated museum in Hiroshima.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum designed by Mr. Kenzo Tange, opened in 1955, aiming to convey the reality of the damage incurred by an atomic bomb to people around the world, and to contribute to the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of everlasting world peace.
At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima became the world’s first city destroyed by an atomic bomb. The bomb destroyed most of the city and claimed many lives. Some victims, who barely survived, also terribly suffered both mentally and physically, and many of these survivors are still suffering.
The Peace Memorial Museum has collected and exhibited victims’ mementos and photos as well as materials that show the devastating damage caused by the A-bombing. It introduces the history of Hiroshima before and after the bombing and the situation of the nuclear age.
The museum also holds lectures on the experiences of the A-bombing by survivors and lends out materials for peace education.
The museum was designated as an Important Cultural Asset of Japan in July, 2006, for the first time as post-war architecture.
A Moving and Poignant Re-Opening for the Main Building of the Peace Memorial Museum
The Main Building of the Peace Memorial Museum closed its doors in 2017 for renovation and fortification against earthquakes, and after two long years, the wait is finally over. Opened on April 25, just before Hiroshima Flower Festival and the unprecedented 10-day Golden Week holidays, the newly renovated Main Building Exhibition Hall is an emotional journey that combines photographs, artwork, artifacts, and stories from survivors to paint a complete picture of the events and aftermath of August 6, 1945.
The exhibit opens as visitors make their way down a darkened hallway, illuminated only by the soft spotlight on a black-and-white photograph of a young girl in bandages. As visitors proceed, they are met with large panels of photographs of Hiroshima along with captions from eyewitnesses in Japanese and English before coming to 3 larger-than-life photographs of the infamous mushroom cloud. The photos, complete with people looking on in the foreground for perspective, give visitors a sense of the overwhelming size of the blast in terms that are easy to understand. The rough black walls of the exhibit provides a stark contrast to the photographs, adding another level of focus and emotion. Visitors are kept in a state of semi-darkness, paralleling the darkness and uncertainty that followed the bombing.
From there, the exhibit proceeds chronologically from the bombing to the effects of radiation, black rain, the ensuing firestorm, and the survivors in post-war Hiroshima. Raw snapshots of the aftermath, including photographs that openly depict children suffering from burns, soldiers with radiation poisoning, and bodies lined up on the ground, may be hard to face for some visitors. But these photographs are perhaps the most powerful deterrent we have against nuclear weapons, and without them, the picture of what happened on August 6 would be incomplete.
From photographs to actual artifacts such as the well-known charred bento box and twisted bicycle, the exhibit carefully explains each one in Japanese and English, and provides an audio tour, as well as explanation
Alo Japan.