The museum opened with a room-sized panorama of Hiroshima in 1942, followed by another taken from the same vantage point three years later.
Before and after in stark comparison.
My son noticed it at once.
“It’s all broken.”
~
A model of Hiroshima sat in the middle of the second room. A projector hung overhead, bringing it to life.
It showed a living city, cars, water, life, and greenery.
A plane shadow passed overhead.
A bomb.
Everything erupted in flames.
After they subsided, twisted metal and ashes remained.
“Daddy, why did the bomb break the city?”
I squeezed his hand.
We kept walking.
The rest of the museum then passed in murmured quiet, interrupted by stifled sobs.
The rooms were cool and dim, the lighting pointing to the displays, rather than at the people moving between them.
Each held another kind of suffering.
Pain, upon pain, upon pain.
“Why, Daddy. Why?”
I didn’t have an answer.
I didn’t try to find one.
Tears started on my face somewhere in the middle rooms.
I wiped them before he could see.
~
The end of the museum came as relief.
Daylight pouring through open windows, brightening the black museum walls into shades of gray.
Looking out, I saw the manicured fields of the memorial park, with an eternal peace flame burning at the center.
I’d thought the museum was over.
I didn’t realize it then, but this view was the final display.