Reliving the Bombing of Hiroshima

That's as unappealing a title as you can get, but it's the honest truth. Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Museum doesn't exist to merely inform you of the tragic events of August 6th 1945. In order to fully comprehend the events that took place on that day, one must be brought to relive the day the sun fell out of the sky and on top of the heads of the citizens of Hiroshima.
Frankly, it was kind of hard to take pictures here. They're allowed, for certain, but it kind of feels inappropriate to do anything but look at the showcases in a mixed sense of wonder and dread at the hell these people were put through.

A display of Hiroshima before and after the bombing. Notice the bomb dome from the last post.

 The Peace Memorial Museum's main focal point is to show the point of view of the civilians who suffered the consequences of the attack. To start with, many of the halls of the museum are lined with the preserved clothing of dead children, with plaques indicating their names, ages, and the circumstances under which they died. Also preserved are samples of the skin that peeled from their bodies and the hair that fell from their scalps. It's as grim as it sounds, and it's gripping to read about healthy fourth grade girls who died in a man-made hellfire, wearing the dresses they proudly made themselves.
 And really, it just goes downhill. Visitors are given the chance to read, listen, and look at the preserved remnants of the bombing, such as melted bottles and pieces of glass hurled so violently from the shock wave that they sank into concrete. Brick wall sections have been moved to the museum to show that the scorching flames imprinted upon them the shadows of the people who were atomized where they stood.

Nightmare fuel, and to think people lived through this.

But to top it off is this one, hellish display recreating a scene from mere moments after the bomb was dropped, showing people in tattered clothes searching for loved ones in the wreckage. Those aren't strips of cloth hanging from their arms. It's their peeling flesh.

 Just like the rest of the Peace Memorial Park, though, the museum has an underlying message of hope for the coming generations to reach out to their governments and protest against the usage of the weaponry that took away 220,000 lives after a single use. The final walk out of the museum is a hall dedicated to the survivors, whose eye-witness accounts and drawings serve as a final plea to take home what you learned and to never forget the atrocities that have been lived in a time not so long ago.