I forgot to add

As a child of Hiroshima Prefecture, my wife was shipped out to the Peace Park every year along with her class, where they went through the Museum there. In principle it’s a very good thing to do, educate the children from an early age, remind them what happened, instill a message of “Never Again.” But as I said, they start going at a very early age, and if you’ve ever been to the museum, you might wonder, what are they thinking? It’s a non-stop tour of the horrors that began from that day, with plenty of gruesome photos and exhibits. My wife couldn’t take it. She kept her eyes down the whole time and every year after she found some kind of excuse to miss that trip. I don’t know how I would’ve reacted to the museum at 6 or 7. I remember seeing some animation about the immediate aftermath with people’s hands falling off and their eyeballs melting. That was pretty horrifying, but I must’ve been 10 or something by then. 11 or 12? Clearly not 6, and that was just a fraction of what’s in store for you at the museum. Everybody should go the museum at the Peace Park, but certainly only when they’re ready. 

As an extra to that, I am reminded of what Kurosawa’s older brother said to him on the banks of the Sumida river after the Great Kanto Earthquake and all the bodies piling up in it. He said something like don’t look away, because if you do it will haunt you all our life. Dare to look at it and you won’t be afraid. While that kind of became the motto for Kurosawa’s art, I think about my wife, haunted by all she didn’t see in the museum that day.