Student Recreates Cityscapes before A-Bombings in Game

Tokyo, Aug. 18 (Jiji Press)–A University of Tokyo graduate student organizes workshops in which participants recreate in a game the cityscapes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki before the August 1945 U.S. atomic bombings, aiming to help people think about what the two cities lost in the nuclear attacks in the closing days of World War II. Misaki Katayama, 27, who researches peace education, has been holding the two-day workshops in Hiroshima, western Japan, and Nagasaki, southwestern Japan, since 2023. At the workshops, fourth- to sixth-grade elementary school students reproduce the cityscapes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki before the bombings in “Minecraft,” a game that allows players to build structures and communities in a virtual world, by using maps, photographs and video footage from the time. At a workshop held in Hiroshima on Aug. 4 and 5, 2023, students simulated the area where Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park now stands, including a temple and a kindergarten that once existed there. The park was built in 1955 near the epicenter of the bombing. Katayama came up with the idea for the workshop six years ago when a hibakusha atomic bomb survivor told her that an elementary school student had said, “It was lucky that the atomic bomb was dropped on a park,” not a densely populated area. The student, on a visit to the park for a peace education program, may not have known that the site was once one of Hiroshima’s busiest districts before the atomic bombing. “As many years have passed, it is now difficult for people to imagine what the city looked like before the bombing,” Katayama said. On the first day of the workshop, participants collect information about the city before the bombing, draw up a plan and remake the cityscape in the game. Through the activity, participants can realize that the city took a very long time to build but was destroyed in an instant, according to Katayama. On the second day, participants view photos of hibakusha immediately after the bombing and listen to stories of survivors, to understand the reality of both before and after the attack and learn how the bomb changed everything. Meanwhile, the game-based peace education program sometimes faces the challenge of preventing participants from becoming so focused on duplicating destroyed buildings that they forget the true purpose of the activity. Katayama sets a time to offer a moment of silence for the atomic bomb victims before the workshops. “It would be disrespectful to hibakusha if the workshop lacks proper preparations and management,” she said. “Digital technology can broaden our imagination of what the cities were like before the atomic bombings and help us reflect on the lives of citizens who were there,” Katayama said. “I hope the workshops will encourage people to think about the atomic bombings.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]