×

News

Reopening of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum’s East Building will be delayed to February 2017

by Masanori Wada, Staff Writer

On July 12, it was learned that the reopening of the exhibition space in the East Building of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, located in Naka Ward, will be delayed again, this time to February 2017. The reopening was originally scheduled for October 2016. Because the reinforcement work being undertaken on the East Building is behind schedule, the reopening has been postponed.

The City of Hiroshima began renovating the East Building in March 2014 and the exhibition space has been closed since September of that year. The city initially announced that the building would reopen in the spring of 2016, but this projection was changed to October because further reinforcement work became necessary when a relevant law was revised. The city went on to explain that requisitions for the reinforcement work have been delayed, and will be pursued in August, because it took more time than expected to review the structural calculations for the building. The period of reinforcement work is estimated to be about six months.

Meanwhile, the start of seismic reinforcement work for the Main Building will also be delayed from October 2016 to January 2017 due to slow progress in the excavation research taking place on the grounds of the Main Building. This excavation is a preliminary step prior to the reinforcement work but was suspended when more remains of old streets were unearthed than expected, along with U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to the museum in May. The excavation has not yet resumed because the entire excavation site has been temporarily refilled to accommodate the Peace Memorial Ceremony on August 6.

After the museum’s East Building reopens, the Main Building will then close to undergo renovation work on the exhibition space. A city official said that the series of delays is not expected to affect the scheduled reopening of the whole museum, which is planned for July 2018.

(Originally published on July 13, 2016)

Archives