Special Exhibit

Fifty-eight years have passed since the world's first atomic bombing. Yet here at the dawn of the 21st century, nuclear-weapon states continue to cling to and even develop their nuclear arsenals while the risk of nuclear proliferation grows and local, internal conflicts erupt ceaselessly. Meanwhile, the aging of the hibakusha means that each day the number of persons who can tell their A-bomb story declines. With all this in mind, we have solicited drawings of the atomic bombing to preserve a pictorial record created by eyewitnesses of that disaster. With support from NHK Hiroshima Broadcasting Station, the Chugoku Shimbun, and other organizations, an A-bomb drawing campaign entitled "To Convey......the Desire for Peace Across the Centuries", collected 1,338 drawings by 484 persons in Hiroshima from April 1 to July 31, 2002. These pictures serve as a people's record-eyewitness testimony regarding the A-bomb tragedy. Each stroke is imbued with the artist's mourning for the dead and the fervent plea that such tragedy never be repeated.
The purpose of this special exhibit is to show, primarily through the pictures solicited by the campaign, how the atomic bombing appeared to the eyes of the people. We hope these images imprint themselves similarly in the minds of the viewers. They are, indeed, a glimpse of the devastation, and we offer them particularly to the young, who, fortunately, know nothing of war.

Photographs of August 6, 1945
Only a handful of photographs remain to show what happened in Hiroshima immediately after the bombing. That day, Yoshito Matsushige walked through Nagarekawa, Hatchobori, Kamiya-cho, and other parts of the city center for hours. A Chugoku Shimbun photographer who was also an army news team member at the time, Matsushige was trying to get to his newspaper company and the army command office. In the end, Matsushige was able to take two pictures at the west end of Miyuki Bridge and one at Minami-machi 3-chome. These three are the only photos taken that day of people injured by the bombing.
1 Policeman providing first-aid to injured Photo / Yoshito Matsushige Around 11:00 a.m., August 6, 1945 Approx. 2,270m from the hypocenter West end of Miyuki Bridge "There I saw a crowd of people whose burned skin was slithering off them. As time went by, the street filled with more and more people so hideously injured that even their gender was unclear. A policeman punched a hole in a can of oil brought from the Ujina Police Station and applied the liquid to the victims' burns. What did these people at death's door think of me as I recorded this scene in photographs" without lending a hand to the many fighting for life. "Sensing that hundreds saw me as a coldhearted, uncompassionate wretch, it was all I could do to click the shutter twice."

A-bomb Drawing Campaign
In 2002, the dawn of the 21st century, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum conducted a campaign to solicit drawings of the atomic bombing. The campaign was conducted under the joint auspices of Nagasaki City, NHK, Chugoku Shimbun, and other organizations. The theme was "To Convey...the Desire for Peace Across the Centuries". The project was conceived to convey what happened in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, by preserving a pictorial record of the experiences of those who were there. These visual testimonies will carry their messages around the world and to coming generations. With the cooperation of the Japan Confederation of A-bomb and H-bomb Sufferers Organizations and many others, from April 1 to July 31, 2002, the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima collected 1,338 pictures from 484 persons, while Nagasaki collected 300 pictures from 130 persons.
	2 A-bomb Drawings by Survivors Courtesy / NHK Hiroshima Broadcasting Station February 2003 NHK Studio Park , Shibuya-ku, Tokyo

A-bomb Drawings-A People's Record of Hiroshima and the Hiroshima We Miss This is not the first time that survivors have been asked to draw pictures of the atomic bombing and share them with others. Under the name "Let us Leave for Posterity our Drawings of the A-bombings" in 1974 and 1975, the NHK Hiroshima Broadcasting Station solicited 2,225 pictures. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum also has a collection of 793 pictures that portray daily life and other aspects of Hiroshima before the war. These were submitted between 1976 and 1978 in response to a call by NHK, this time under the theme "The Hiroshima We Miss". The Peace Memorial Museum plans to use these pictures, including the newly collected pictures of the atomic bombing, to convey the A-bomb experience.
	A-bomb Drawings by Survivors 3　the scene around the Yorozuyo Bridge Drawing and text / Iwakichi Kobayashi Around 4:00 p.m., August 6, 1945 Approx. 890m from the hypocenter Yorozuyo Bridge
		the Hiroshima We Miss 4　Camphor tree at Kokutaiji Temple before the bombing Drawing / Sawano Nakazawa Ko-machi (now, Naka-machi)