Aichi and Nagoya War Museum

photo by 円周率３パーセント · CC BY-SA 4.0

photo by full moon69 · CC BY 3.0

2,579 B-29s flew over Nagoya: a model of one of their incendiary bombs is in the display case.

The museum is on the ground floor of a prefectural branch office, five minutes' walk from the castle. Inside are a model of an incendiary cluster bomb, school exercise books from the war years and the letters of conscripts from the prefecture. A video reconstructs the air raids on the city by computer. In summer the museum holds a series of talks in which people who were there sit down in front of the visitors and tell their story.

Aichi Prefecture and the city of Nagoya opened it together in July 2015, to display the objects that residents had kept at home since the war and pass them on to those who come after. The exhibition follows three lines: civilian life under the wartime regime, the bombing of the city, and the post-war years and reconstruction. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications counts 2,579 B-29 bombers deployed over Nagoya and more than 14,500 tonnes of bombs dropped.

ℹ️ Open 10:00–16:00. Closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, from 29 December to 3 January and on exhibition changeover days; if a closing day falls on a public holiday, the museum opens and makes up the closure on the first weekday after. It does not close on any day from 21 July to 31 August and from 21 to 27 November. Admission is free. It is five minutes' walk south from exit 4 of Nagoya-jō Station, Meijō Line, the same one as for the castle; from Hisaya-ōdori Station it is eight minutes north. At weekends and on public holidays, between midday and 13:00, the office may be empty because the staff are in the exhibition room.

🚉 Hisaya-odori · 10 min walk

Sources: pref.aichi.jp · city.nagoya.jp · soumu.go.jp

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