Fukuromachi Elementary School Peace Museum

Located 460 meters from the hypocenter, Hiroshima City Fukuromachi Elementary School (then Fukuromachi Ordinary and Higher Elementary School) suffered serious damage from the atomic bomb. Many students escaped the disaster by evacuating en masse or to relatives, but the 100 or so students and most of the teachers and staff who remained lost their lives in an instant. All wooden school buildings collapsed and burned down, and only the West Building, which was made of reinforced concrete, retained its original shape, except for its outer shell. It served as an evacuation site and relief center, where students, teachers, and local people could be inquired about their safety. People wrote messages on the burned walls with the little chalk scattered on the floor. Classes resumed in May 1946. In 2002, as the aging school building was rebuilt, part of the West Building that had been exposed to the atomic bomb was preserved as the Fukuromachi Elementary School Peace Museum. Valuable materials remaining from the atomic bombing are on display, including part of the interior wall where the message was written, and the school's state after the bombing is introduced.