Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (right)
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The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is a
museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...
located in
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is a memorial park in the center of Hiroshima, Japan. It is dedicated to the legacy of Hiroshima as the first city in the world to suffer a Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear attack at the end of World War II, and to the memorie ...
, in central
Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...
, Japan, dedicated to documenting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. The museum was established in August 1955 with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall (now the ). It is the most popular of Hiroshima's destinations for school field-trips from all over Japan and for international visitors. 53 million people had visited the museum from its opening in 1955 through 2005, averaging over one million visitors per year. The architect of the main building was
Kenzō Tange was a Japanese architect, and winner of the 1987 Pritzker Prize for architecture. He was one of the most significant architects of the 20th century, combining traditional Japanese styles with modernism, and designed major buildings on five cont ...
.


Museum content

According to the introduction in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum's English guide:
"The Peace Memorial Museum collects and displays belongings left by the victims, photos, and other materials that convey the horror of that event, supplemented by exhibits that describe Hiroshima before and after the bombings and others that present the current status of the nuclear age. Each of the items displayed embodies the grief, anger, or pain of real people. Having now recovered from the A-bomb calamity, Hiroshima's deepest wish is the elimination of all nuclear weapons and the realization of a genuinely peaceful international community."
To facilitate education, the museum was renovated in 1994 and was now divided into two sections. The East Wing—the newest addition—explained the history of Hiroshima City before the bomb, development and decision to drop the bomb, the lives of Hiroshima citizens during World War II and after the bombing, and ended with information about the nuclear age and efforts for international peace. Included in this section was a model showing the damage done to the city. It had some important letters exchanged between scientists and top leaders of that era talking about atomic development and predicted result of its use. The West Wing, which was part of the old museum, concentrated on the damage of the bomb. Sections included ''Material Witness'', which showed clothing, watches, hair, and other personal effects worn by victims of the bomb; ''Damage by the Heat Rays'', a section that looked at what happened to wood, stone, metal, glass, and flesh from the heat; ''Damage by the Blast'', focusing on the destruction caused by the after shocks of the blast, and ''Damage by the Radiation'' which went into detail about the health effects suffered by humans. The museum began major renovations in 2014. The East Wing reopened in April 2017, featuring more interactive displays and replacing the model of the city with a new version that uses
projection mapping Projection mapping, similar to video mapping and spatial augmented reality, is a projection technique used to turn objects, often irregularly shaped, into display surfaces for video projection. The objects may be complex industrial landscapes, s ...
to demonstrate the effects of the bomb blast. When the East Wing reopened, the Main Hall was closed for seismic retrofitting until 25 April 2019. The exhibits were also renovated during this time to focus more on victim's belongings, and are now divided into four sections: an introductory exhibit in the East Wing, "Reality of the Atomic Bombing" and a gallery in the Main Building, "Dangers of Nuclear Weapons" in the East Wing, and "Hiroshima History" in the East Wing.


List of notable visitors


Gallery

File:Hiroshima museum.JPG, Former model of Hiroshima City flattened after the explosion. The red ball depicts the explosion point. File:Hiroshima-atombomb watch.jpg, A watch stopped at the time of the atomic bombing File:Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum 2008 02.JPG, The Main Building of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum File:Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum 2008 03.JPG, The East Building of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum File:Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (front).jpg, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum showing axis with cenotaph and A-bomb dome (1949) File:Peace Watch in Hiroshima 2005 (75126787).jpg,
Peace Watch Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. In a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (such as war) and freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups. ...
File:Hiroshima Statues Musée pour la Paix.jpg, Reconstruction of physical damages on people and buildings after the explosion of the American atomic bomb in Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (1973-2017)


See also

*
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...
*
Hiroshima Peace Memorial The , originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, and now commonly called the Genbaku Dome, , is part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The ruin ...
* '' Hiroshima Witness'' – 1986 documentary film *
Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum The is in the city of Nagasaki, Japan. The museum is a remembrance to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki by the United States of America 9 August 1945 at 11:02:35 am. Next to the museum is the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bom ...
*
Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims The is a commemorative monument in Nagasaki, Japan, situated next to its Atomic Bomb Museum. The Peace Park is nearby. Like its counterpart in Hiroshima, the hall was constructed as a place to remember and pray for those who died in the 1945 ...
* Nagasaki Peace Park *
Sadako Sasaki was a Japanese girl who became a victim of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. She was two years of age when the bombs were dropped and was severely irradiated. She survived for another ten years, becoming one ...
*
Human Shadow Etched in Stone is an exhibition at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It is thought to be the residue of a person who was sitting at the entrance of Hiroshima Branch of Sumitomo Bank when the atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima. It is also known as Human ...
- one of the exhibitions at the museum


References


External links

*
Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims



Hiroshima Archive
* {{authority control 1955 establishments in Japan Monuments and memorials concerning the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Modernist architecture in Japan Museums established in 1955 Museums in Hiroshima Peace museums World War II museums in Japan