A-bomb museum sees record visitors in FY2016, boosted by Obama's visit

No matter the reason, the more people are educated about the horrors of nuclear weapons the better! Hopefully the visitors from within Japan will also keep in mind the potential disasters awaiting with having nuclear energy as well!

Its a shame that its taken the visit of a moderately successful ex President of another country to make people go there! I would have thought and hoped it would have been high on the list of places to visit in Japan for anyone?

Just me then?

"No matter the reason, the more people are educated about the horrors of nuclear weapons the better!" You are kidding right? The A-bomb museums in mainland Japan only tell half the truth. They leave out major swaths of history, they portray the Americans as bad guys and play up that Japan were helpless victims in a war that "other countries instigated". For example they show a picture of a school the evil americans destroyed with the bomb. They fail to mention that school was a military training institution and grenade making factory. At one of the museums, I can't remember which, they have an extensive timeline of the events that lead of to the bomb dropping. They completely omit the warning we sent directly to the emperor telling him of the attack begging his surrender because they did not want to attack Japan anymore, which the emperor completely ignored at the behest of many in his military. What a curious thing to totally emit.

The peace thing is great, but those museums paint a very lopsided and half truth of the war. The only decent WW2 museums I have been to in Japan are in Okinawa. They paint the true and real history of the war. There were no good and bad guys. It was just horrific war. The reality of the war that is depicted in the Naha museums is a much more sobering experience than any main land museums.

@Robert Dykes - The peace thing is great, but those museums paint a very lopsided and half truth of the war.

Coincidently, I went to the Hiroshima museum a fortnight ago and got exactly the same impression. It was more about showing Japan as the victim than showing the atrocity of nuclear weapons. I also found a lot of the information on the displays to be exaggerated and biased. At ground zero (the skeleton building) in the Peace Park there was a group of older people preaching right-wing hate speech and promoting imperialism. I stood there listening to them for ten minutes. You should have seen the look on the old guy's face when he realised I could understand him. He gave me a real death glare. I was tempted to ask him about Nanjing and the comfort women just to stir his pot and the pots of the 30 or so Japanese listening to his drivel, but decided on discretion instead. However, I have to admit, being at 'ground zero' was still very creepy.

What was the lesson learned by America and the rest of the world from Hiroshima Nagasaki? That they should have thousands of missiles on standby with multiple nuclear warheads capable of causing destruction on an scale unseen by mankind.

The numbers have been going up like this for years and should not be attributed to Obama except for the "mascot" effect from the Japanese population.

According to the figures it's the fourth straight year of growth, an increase of 104,531 international visitors over 2014.

The museum attracted over 1.4 million visitors for the first time since 2009. The greatest number, 1,593,280, was recorded in 1991 after the museum’s main building reopened after a renovation.

According to local media, visits to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum by foreign tourists hit a record high of 234,360 visitors in 2014. That's more than a 100% increase from just three years ago.

http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=59354

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/01/travel/hiroshima-peace-museum/