Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Peace Museums break visitor record with over 3 million people

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Museums welcomed around 3 million visitors in 2024, a record number that comes after the survivors of the atomic bombs won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 and while the country is experiencing a wave of tourism.

In the case of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, it welcomed more than 2 million people in the Japanese fiscal year 2024 (from April of that year to last February), a record number.

Last March, it also reached the milestone of 80 million visitors since its opening , in the year that marks its 70th anniversary and the 80th anniversary of the event that completely devastated this Japanese city.

"Due to the weak yen, an environment has developed that makes it easier for foreigners to come to Japan ," explained Toshihiro Toya, the institution's assistant director, during a press trip last July organized by the Foreign Press Center of Japan (FPCJ).

Toya hopes that those who travel to Japan will visit not only major cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, but also Hiroshima, "a city that boasts two World Heritage Sites: the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Itsukushima Shrine (on Miyajima Island)."

Japan welcomed 21.51 million visitors in the first six months of 2025 , a new record, so if this trend continues it could reach 40 million by the end of this year, up from 36 million in 2024.

The assistant director believes the trend has also increased among those "who want to learn about peace" and the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

Located near ground zero where the bomb was dropped on the center of the western Japanese city, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which opened in 1955 , displays victims' belongings, photographs of the consequences of radiation, debris from the period, and a reproduction of the device used, Little Boy, among other artifacts and documents.

The center seeks to convey the horrors of nuclear weapons , as the first city to be targeted by an atomic bombing.

The leaders of the so-called Group of Seven (G7, made up of Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom) visited the museum during their stay in the city for the group's summit in 2023, as did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who participated in that meeting.

The leaders' visit has also had a pull effect, resulting in an increase in monthly visitors to the center.

The number of visitors to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum in fiscal year 2024 exceeded 800,000 for the first time in more than two decades , a 6.9 percent increase from the previous year and the first time this figure has been reached since 2001.

The museum received its highest visitor count ever in fiscal year 1996 , when it opened, with an estimated 1,135,000 visitors. Since fiscal year 2002, the annual number has consistently remained between 650,000 and 750,000 visitors, although it dropped dramatically to about 230,000 in 2020 due to the pandemic.

The municipal peace promotion division points out that the increase in cruise ship calls in Nagasaki has been one of the factors explaining the upswing.

"The current tense situation in the world and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize may have increased global interest in nuclear weapons," said an official in the field.