Originally Posted by moondog
So, we paid the nominal admission fee and entered the museum. In contrast with the museum the Chinese have erected in Nanjing to highlight Japanese autrocities during WWII, the Hiroshima museum does very little finger pointing and blaming. In fact, politics are hardly discussed at all. Rather, the message is a simpler one; "bombs are bad".
Indeed. Which is why all those busloads of Japanese schoolkids trooping into the museum get the impression that the Japanese during WW2 were just tripping through sunny meadows holding hands with their friends in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, picking flowers and drinking sake, and then for no reason at all the evil Americans came and did this horribi-ba-ble thing to them.
Due to protests from overseas, there is, however, now a token room at the beginning of the museum that mentions eg. the Nanjing "Incident". But you might still want to ask the people of Hiroshima why they won't allow the monument to Chinese and Korean slave workers killed in the blast to be placed in the Peace Park.
But there is one place I do like a lot in Hiroshima:
Shukkei-en garden. It's gorgeous, and (IMHO) much better than Okayama's more famous Korakuen. And surely you tried the
okonomiyaki at some point?