Exhibitions
War and Peace The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 21 May–29 August
FROM THE DEATH, DESTRUCTION AND DESPAIR created when atom bombs were detonated over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 grew a movement for nuclear disarmament and peace. Student ambassadors from the museum’s ‘War and Peace in the Pacific 75’ International Learning Program1 went to Japan in 2019. They visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, met a survivor of the bombing and heard her story. From this meeting grew a relationship that has resulted in this extraordinary exhibition. Sadako Sasaki was two years old when the A-bomb blast blew her through the window of her house. Apparently unscathed, she developed radiation-induced leukaemia in 1955. While in hospital, she began folding a thousand paper cranes that according to legend, would grant her a wish. Before she died in August 1955, Sadako had exceeded her goal and folding paper cranes has become symbolic of a wish for peace. In the exhibition some of Sadako’s cranes are displayed beside a crane folded by US President Barack Obama in 2016, when he was the first leader of a nuclear power to visit the museum in Hiroshima. 58
Signals 135 Winter 2021
The exhibition tells the stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from pre-war prosperity and wartime industrial power to their utter devastation under atomic attack, and then their recovery and prosperity as peace cities. It tells of Australian prisoners of war who survived the bombing and of the fateful voyage of USS Indianapolis, the heavy cruiser that raced uranium-235 across the Pacific to Tinian, where the atomic bombs were assembled. War and Peace – the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an exhibition from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Part of ‘War and Peace in the Pacific 75’, an Australian National Maritime Museum USA Program supported by the USA Bicentennial Gift Fund. Visitors are warned that the exhibition contains images and stories of death and destruction that may disturb some people. 1 sea.museum/wapip75 Mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, 6 August 1945. ANMM Collection, 00030434. Purchased with USA Bicentennial Gift funds
