Photo/Illutration The ruined Tenjinmachi-suji street and roadside ditches, right, devastated by the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing in Hiroshima are excavated at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in the city’s Naka Ward in September 2019. (Koichi Ueda)

HIROSHIMA--The city government on Aug. 3 released an outline of a facility that will exhibit the ruins of a downtown area leveled by atomic bombing as part of efforts to keep memories of the Aug. 6, 1945, event alive.

Authorities expect to open the facility at the end of fiscal 2021.

It will display the foundations of houses, along with artifacts excavated from the Nakajima area, which was one of the best downtown districts in Hiroshima, at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in the city's Naka Ward. The excavation site is located about 300 meters south of ground zero.

The single-story facility, which will be built at the northern side of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum’s east building, will exhibit an asphalt-paved street called Tenjinmachi-suji and roadside ditches, as well as replica tatami mats and lumber charred by the inferno triggered by the blast.

The items will be put on public display in the same condition in which they were found.

Photos showing houses along the street and local residents going about their daily lives before the bombing will also be displayed.

The city also plans to install a walkway leading to the facility that will be the same width as Tenjinmachi-suji street in or after fiscal 2022.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was completed in 1954, nine years after the bombing, by raising the ground level at the burned-out site. The ruins were found under a layer about 60 to 90 centimeters deep.

“The atomic bombing destroyed a town that was bustling with people in an instant and deprived them of their peaceful lives,” said Masayuki Miura, professor emeritus at Hiroshima University who heads an expert panel that discussed how to exhibit the ruins. “We want people to feel the cruelty of the bombing.”

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