In 1952, a memorial cenotaph, or empty grave, commemorating the lives lost after the bomb was built in what is now known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The park was built around the hypocenter of the “Little Boy” explosion, in what was once the city’s busy downtown district.
Also in the memorial park is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall, the Children’s Peace Monument, the Peace Flame, the Gates of Peace, and the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound, where the cremated remains of 70,000 unidentified explosion victims rest.
In 2016, Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to travel to Hiroshima. He laid a wreath during a ceremony at Peace Memorial Park with Japan’s then-prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and greeted Hiroshima bombing survivors.
The site’s popularity has continued to grow among visitors. Ahead of the end of its fiscal year in March 2025, the Peace Memorial Museum exceeded 2 million annual visitors for the first time, The Japan Times reported. Of these visitors, nearly a third were foreigners.
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