KITA-KYUSHU--A radio sits on a "tansu" chest of drawers, with a nearby speaker playing "Warship March" and the Imperial General Headquarters' announcement regarding the 1942 Battle of Midway to re-create the radio broadcast.

Sitting in the tatami mat room is a 1.8-liter "issho-bin" bottle used for polishing rice, while the windows are taped up to prevent flying glass from bomb blasts.

A light bulb hanging from the ceiling is covered by a cloth due to blackout restrictions.

"Wow, this was like how people used to live," a boy mumbled in one section of the Kitakyushu City Museum of Peace here.

Visitors can enter the room and touch wartime items to gain a hands-on experience into the everyday lives of the people back then.

Standing in one corner of the Katsuyama Koen park in the center of the city's Kokura-Kita Ward, the peace museum opened in the spring.

The area was home to the Kokura Army Arsenal, which was one of the largest arms factories in western Japan.

It stood on a vast site of 583,000 square meters to manufacture a wide variety of weapons and military supplies, with female students mobilized to work at the arsenal during the closing days of World War II.

The facility was also targeted for attack by U.S. forces. It was bombed during an air raid in June 1944 along with the state-owned Yahata Steel Works in current Yahata-Higashi Ward.

‘FEEL’ ABSURDITIES OF WAR

Kita-Kyushu was also an initial target for an atomic bomb.

On the morning of Aug. 9, 1945, a B-29 bomber loaded with an atomic bomb reached the skies over Kokura, now part of Kita-Kyushu.

But there were too many clouds obscuring the city, making it impossible to acquire the target.

The B-29 changed course to the secondary target of Nagasaki and dropped the bomb, which exploded over a valley in the Urakami district.

It was the absurdity of war that determined the fate of the city in an irrational manner.

After the war, the people of Kita-Kyushu were left with a particularly strong feeling that the tragedies that befell Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have occurred here but for a twist of fate.

A memorial monument was erected at Katsuyama Koen in 1973, where a ceremony is held on Aug. 9 every year.

While the city government has co-hosted the event since 2008, it started efforts in 2009 to plant seedlings from cherry trees collectively known as "Kayoko Zakura," which are dedicated to a female student killed by the atomic bombing in Nagasaki, at elementary and junior high schools and elsewhere in the city.

Still, memories of the war and the atomic bombings were fading.

PLACE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

Concerned about the situation, the city government decided to spend about 900 million yen ($6.28 million) to build the peace museum, saying that it was necessary to make further efforts to provide a place for young generations with no firsthand knowledge of war to learn about the importance of peace.

One of the museum's highlights is a 360-degree theater where visitors can have an immersive experience of the Aug. 8, 1945, Yahata air raid and the Aug. 9 Nagasaki atomic bombing with animated imagery and sound effects.

The museum also offers visitors a chance to "experience" exhibits with their senses, encouraging them to hold a model of an incendiary bomb and feel its actual weight and hear the sound of an air-raid siren.

Also on display at the venue are copies of the U.S. military directives to drop the atomic bombs on Aug. 6 and 9.

The museum has also enriched its collection of video accounts of war experiences, adding clips of Teruko Kusumoto, who was pressed into military service to work at the Kokura Army Arsenal and passed away in January this year at age 91, and other survivors.

"I'd be happy if children can learn and feel something here, even if only slightly," said Yasutaka Tazume, director-general of the museum.

Meanwhile, members of a civic group that had been asking for the city government to build the peace museum point out that it places a disproportionate emphasis on how Japan suffered during the war instead of showing how the country inflicted suffering on others.

"It is humans that start a war and humans that end one. We can't build peace unless we understand the inner workings and psychology of the aggressor," said Toshifumi Murakami, a professor emeritus at Kyoto University of Education, who specializes in peace education.

He continued that it will be important for the museum to play a role not only in exhibiting items but also in providing a forum for dialogue.

"It is impossible to nurture peace-builders through a 'lecture-type' museum where visitors listen to stories in a one-sided manner. It is important in peace education to foster a personal perspective through dialogue," he added.