Peace Memorial Park

The park’s organising idea is Tange’s Axis of Peace: a sightline that runs from the elevated Peace Memorial Museum, through the arch of the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims, and lands on the Atomic Bomb Dome across the river. Stand at the cenotaph and you see all three at once — the museum (the future), the names of the dead inside the cenotaph (the victims), and the ruin (the day itself).

Allow at least 90 minutes for the park even before the museum. The Children’s Peace Monument (with Sadako Sasaki on top and thousands of folded paper cranes in the surrounding cases), the Peace Bell (visitors are encouraged to ring it), and the Flame of Peace (lit since 1964, to be extinguished only when the last nuclear weapon is dismantled) are the deliberate stops. Free, open 24 hours; the museum and information centre have set hours.

The area now occupied by the park was the Nakajima district — the political and commercial heart of Hiroshima before 1945, chosen by the bombers as the aiming point precisely because it was the densest and most central part of the city. Four years to the day after the bomb, August 6, 1949, the city decided the area would not be rebuilt but devoted permanently to peace memorial facilities. Tange’s plan, selected in a 1949 competition, organized the site around the sightline axis and the new museum.

The Cenotaph holds a stone chest with a register of names of those who died as a result of the bomb — everyone killed on August 6 and those who died later from radiation exposure. The count exceeds 330,000 names. Every year on August 6, a formal ceremony is held at the cenotaph at 8:15 a.m. — the moment of detonation — with a moment of silence, speeches, and wreaths. The park fills with survivors, dignitaries, and visitors for this occasion; accommodation in the city books months in advance for the anniversary.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (reopened 2019 after major renovation) is the park’s centerpiece interior experience. The redesigned East Building focuses on the history of Hiroshima before and after the bomb; the Main Building, the more difficult of the two, displays personal belongings of victims — a charred lunchbox, a child’s tricycle, shadows burned into stone. Allow 60-90 minutes for the museum alone; it is emotionally demanding. Admission is 200 yen; hours 8:30-18:00 (extended to 19:00 in August and during peak season). The nearby National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims (free) holds a 360-degree panorama of the destroyed city and a database of victim testimonies.

Access by tram from Hiroshima Station on lines 2 or 6 to Genbaku Dome-mae (15 minutes, 240 yen). The park is free and open around the clock; lighting the flame and bell-ringing areas are accessible at any hour.