Honkawa Elementary School Peace Museum (A-bombed building)

Honkawa Elementary School was built in 1928 as Honkawa Elementary School. At the time, it was the first public elementary school in Hiroshima City to be built as a three-story reinforced concrete building. The L-shaped block plan school building had a hall, a shoe-removal area, and dust chutes from the second and third floors. It also had arches in the openings on the first floor and the main entrance, giving it a modern look. The school was exposed to the atomic bomb 410 meters from the hypocenter, and has since been repaired and renovated several times, before opening as a peace museum in 1988. In order to convey the reality of the bombing to future generations, parts of the school building that were damaged by the atomic bomb have been preserved as they were, and the building itself directly speaks of the horrors of war and the importance of peace. You can see exhibits collected by former teachers from the site of the bombing. The museum exhibits the book that inspired the inscription engraved on the central stone chamber of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (a memorial to the victims of the atomic bomb) (written by Tadayoshi Saika, a professor at Hiroshima University's Faculty of Letters, at the request of Shinzo Hamai, mayor of Hiroshima at the time), photographs of the damage, and artifacts that were affected by the bomb, as well as panels explaining the history of the museum from before the bombing until its preservation as a peace museum. A model of Hiroshima at the time of the bombing that was on display in the main building of the Peace Memorial Museum has been relocated to the basement floor.