Peace Museum’s newly exhibited “Father and Child” drawings convey A-bombing’s devastation
Oct. 21, 2022
by Fumiyasu Miyano, Staff Writer
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, located in the city’s Naka Ward, has newly rotated pieces of art in the museum’s permanent exhibition section titled “Emotion Carried by the Brush,” which has on display drawings created by survivors of the atomic bombing. Six works based on the theme “Father and Child” are scheduled to be on display until February 13, 2023. The drawings convey the pain and sorrow of that day, August 6, 1945, when family members were deprived of their loved ones.
Hisako Aobara, 88, a resident of Hiroshima’s Asaminami Ward, drew in crayon a scene of sisters eagerly awaiting the return home of their father, who in fact had died in the atomic bombing. Believing a stranger to be their father, her younger sister, who was five years old at the time, ran towards the man with a smile on her face. The scene is heartbreaking.
A man illustrated a drawing that shows his experience cremating the corpse of his three-year-old daughter on the day after the atomic bombing, to which he added a caption that reads, “I feel I’m going insane. This hell doesn’t seem like the real world …,” lamenting the absurdity of the atomic bombing. Moriaki Ito, 59, a company employee from Kawanishi City in Hyogo Prefecture, eyed the drawing closely and said, “The suffering of young children is the most painful.”
The Peace Memorial Museum has in its collection about 5,000 A-bomb drawings. In April 2019, when renovation of the main building was completed, the museum set up a permanent exhibition section in which such drawings are rotated on a regular basis.
(Originally published on October 21, 2022)
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, located in the city’s Naka Ward, has newly rotated pieces of art in the museum’s permanent exhibition section titled “Emotion Carried by the Brush,” which has on display drawings created by survivors of the atomic bombing. Six works based on the theme “Father and Child” are scheduled to be on display until February 13, 2023. The drawings convey the pain and sorrow of that day, August 6, 1945, when family members were deprived of their loved ones.
Hisako Aobara, 88, a resident of Hiroshima’s Asaminami Ward, drew in crayon a scene of sisters eagerly awaiting the return home of their father, who in fact had died in the atomic bombing. Believing a stranger to be their father, her younger sister, who was five years old at the time, ran towards the man with a smile on her face. The scene is heartbreaking.
A man illustrated a drawing that shows his experience cremating the corpse of his three-year-old daughter on the day after the atomic bombing, to which he added a caption that reads, “I feel I’m going insane. This hell doesn’t seem like the real world …,” lamenting the absurdity of the atomic bombing. Moriaki Ito, 59, a company employee from Kawanishi City in Hyogo Prefecture, eyed the drawing closely and said, “The suffering of young children is the most painful.”
The Peace Memorial Museum has in its collection about 5,000 A-bomb drawings. In April 2019, when renovation of the main building was completed, the museum set up a permanent exhibition section in which such drawings are rotated on a regular basis.
(Originally published on October 21, 2022)
