Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Three abstract, humanoid figures with elongated limbs and multicolored brushstrokes stand bent forward. Handwritten Japanese text is present on both sides of the figures, evoking the atmosphere of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum's Permanent Exhibitions.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum | Permanent Exhibitions

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, though located in Hiroshima, offers permanent exhibitions available for free and easily accessible online. Housed within the museum are items of material culture that represent the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima, in which a single atomic bomb killed tens of thousands of the city’s inhabitants, most of whom were civilians. The museum stands as a testament to the permanently altered way of life led by the survivors, and as a memorial to those who perished. Those who visit the museum’s virtual exhibitions can navigate the site’s user friendly pages to view the entire permanent collection. This interactive resource is encouraged for use in history classrooms in particular.

Student Resource
A person with long hair tilts their head back and opens their mouth as rain falls, raindrops sketched in lines and hair blown sideways—a scene reminiscent of images from MIT Visualizing Cultures: Ground Zero 1945.

MIT Visualizing Cultures: Ground Zero 1945 

The MIT Visualizing Cultures project is an online database of historical images accompanied by essays that teach world history, and one of their most important pages is “Ground Zero 1945.” This page teaches about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through drawings from survivors and an essay by John H. Dower. This is a great interactive resource for high school history classes that will allow students to visualize this unimaginable event. Please note that, though the atomic bombings are a crucial part of history to include in classrooms, the drawings in this resource are graphic depictions of painful and disturbing events. Discretion is advised.

Student Resource
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