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Venue for talks given by “memory keepers” of A-bomb experience shift to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

by Tomoko Takamoto, Staff Writer

On July 6, the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation began holding talks given by “memory keepers” of the A-bomb experience in the first basement of the East Building of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Naka Ward. Due to renovation work now being undertaken at the museum, the talks had been held in the seminar rooms of the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, also located in the Peace Memorial Park, since the talks debuted in April. However, because the average number of visitors for each talk had been low, not more than eight, the venue was changed. The talks will be held at the Peace Memorial Museum two to four times each day at specified times until the end of this month, while the foundation monitors the number of people that attend.

The talks feature memory keepers from the first group of trainees, who completed roughly three years of training, sharing with visitors the memories inherited from A-bomb survivors and their desire for peace. As the two seminar rooms in the Peace Memorial Hall are also used for talks by A-bomb survivors about their experiences to students on school trips, it was difficult to arrange specific times for the memory keepers to give their talks on a daily basis. As a result, on some days there were no rooms available for talks by the memory keepers or no visitors appeared to take part.

For this reason, the foundation decided to hold their talks in the Peace Memorial Museum on a trial basis. The annual number of visitors to the museum is five times that of visitors to the Peace Memorial Hall, and the talks were originally intended to take place in the museum. A 30-square-meter corner of the lobby on the first basement of the East Building containing 24 chairs has been separated off with partition boards. Until July 17, the talks will be held every weekday in English at 1 p.m. and in Japanese at 2:30 p.m. On weekends, and every weekday after July 18, two additional Japanese language sessions will be held at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.

On the first day, July 6, a total of 23 visitors attended the two sessions. After listening to the experiences of A-bomb survivors from the memory keeper Yasushi Tsuji, 73, in English, Ayumi Kamikawa, 22, a senior at a university in the United States, said, “I was shocked. My classes in history never taught me about this in detail. It’s mind-boggling. I was really fortunate to hear this talk.”

From August 1 to 16, a special event will be held in the first basement of the East Building so the venue for the talks will return to the Peace Memorial Hall. The venue on and after August 17 will be decided based on the number of visitors in July.

(Originally published on July 7, 2015)

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