@70 days until Hiroshima Summit: Peace museums at elementary schools
Mar. 10, 2023
by Chinatsu Mukai, Staff Writer
Fukuromachi Elementary School and Honkawa Elementary School in Naka Ward, Hiroshima, are in the vicinity of the hypocenter. Many of their students lost their lives, especially those in the lower grades who had not moved to safer areas. Both schools have a peace museum in their old building that survived the atomic bombing. These museums are open to the public.
Fukuromachi Elementary School was used as a first-aid station shortly after the bombing. On the wall of the stairway of its old building, messages written in chalk still remain. The messages about the status of students and teachers say, “Alive, or dead, unknown, information wanted,” or “…has died.” Those messages were found behind the wall’s plaster in 1999 when a study was conducted for the reconstruction of the building.
Melted glass bottles and roof tiles displayed in the museum of Honkawa Elementary School tell of the horrible intensity of the heat rays to which they were exposed. The cruelty of indiscriminately killing even young children. Anger. The school building standing in the same place as it did at the time of the bombing stirs the imagination of visitors.
(Originally published on March 10, 2023)
Fukuromachi Elementary School and Honkawa Elementary School in Naka Ward, Hiroshima, are in the vicinity of the hypocenter. Many of their students lost their lives, especially those in the lower grades who had not moved to safer areas. Both schools have a peace museum in their old building that survived the atomic bombing. These museums are open to the public.
Fukuromachi Elementary School was used as a first-aid station shortly after the bombing. On the wall of the stairway of its old building, messages written in chalk still remain. The messages about the status of students and teachers say, “Alive, or dead, unknown, information wanted,” or “…has died.” Those messages were found behind the wall’s plaster in 1999 when a study was conducted for the reconstruction of the building.
Melted glass bottles and roof tiles displayed in the museum of Honkawa Elementary School tell of the horrible intensity of the heat rays to which they were exposed. The cruelty of indiscriminately killing even young children. Anger. The school building standing in the same place as it did at the time of the bombing stirs the imagination of visitors.
(Originally published on March 10, 2023)
