Paintings of the Atomic Bombing by High School Students Art Club, Hiroshima Municipal Motomachi Senior High School
Since 2004, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has sponsored “Painting the Atomic Bombing with the Next Generation”. It is a project that communicates scenes and situations that atomic bomb survivors cannot express through words in their testimonies. Students of a special creative expression course at the Hiroshima Municipal Motomachi Senior High School have been a part of the project since 2007, handing down the activities from older to younger students.
Every year around October, survivors and students gather for face-to-face meetings, to hear stories about the bombing and to set directions for the scenes to be painted. In subsequent individual discussions, the participants move ahead while carefully checking the composition and color of the works, and complete paintings over the course of about nine months. The paintings of the bombing are exhibited every August and December, with the students themselves using the gallery talks to present the thoughts that went into the pictures.
We interviewed four students who engaged in this activity, together with their advisor, OKUDA Yuho.