Family Travel Unpacked: Make the Most of Travel With Kids

Visiting Hiroshima with Kids: An Honest Guide

• Melissa Conn • Season 1 • Episode 19

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Visiting Hiroshima with kids: Should families tour the A-bomb sites? Melissa shares honest advice on navigating Japan with kids, including age-appropriate preparation strategies and what to expect at the Peace Memorial Museum. Learn which books helped her family prepare, how her 8 and 10-year-old handled the experience, and practical tips for making the right choices for your children.

In this episode:

  • Best books to prepare kids for visiting Hiroshima
  • What to see at Peace Memorial Park (outdoor memorials vs. museum)
  • How to handle the intense Peace Memorial Museum with different ages
  • Real experience: How an 8-year-old and 10-year-old navigated the sites
  • Alternative options for younger children
  • Practical admission and planning tips

00:00 Introduction to Family Travel Unpacked

00:14 Discussing Hiroshima with Kids

00:55 Preparing for the Visit

01:24 Exploring Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

02:08 Navigating the Peace Memorial Museum

04:01 Practical Tips and Final Thoughts

04:52 Conclusion and Additional Resources

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Hey there and welcome back to Family Travel Unpacked. I'm Melissa and you're listening to Quick Tip Tuesday. If you wanna dig deeper, you'll find tons of detailed destination guides, travel tips, hacks, and more on my website, thefamilyvoyage.com. Today I wanna talk about something that came up when we were planning our Japan trip. Should we visit Hiroshima's atomic bomb sites with our kids? It's one of those questions that doesn't have a one size fits all answer, but I wanted to share what worked for us, and hopefully help you make the right call for your family. And if you wanna zoom out and hear about planning your whole Japan trip, head back to the previous episode before you listen to this one. So first off, let me say this: visiting Hiroshima was absolutely worth it for our family. Our kids were eight and 11 at the time, and it ended up being a really meaningful experience for all of us. But it was also the hardest day emotionally, and we had to make some real time judgment calls about what each kid was ready to see. The key to making this work was preparation. We didn't just show up. We read books together beforehand, both at home and while we were traveling through Japan. The two I'd really recommend are,"What was the bombing of Hiroshima?", which gives all the historical context in an age appropriate way for elementary schoolers, and"Sadko and the Thousand Paper Cranes", which tells the story from a child's perspective. These books opened up conversations where the kids could ask questions without the intensity of being at the actual site. I'll link to both of those down in the show notes for you. Now let's talk about what you'll actually see when you visit the site. Hiroshima peace Memorial Park has several outdoor memorials that everyone should visit, and I think they're really appropriate for any age. There's the A- bomb dome. It's probably the most recognizable part of the park. It's the haunting shell of a building that somehow remains standing after the bomb. Then there's the Eno for the Victims, which has a stone memorial arch and a box holding the names of everyone who died from the bomb itself, as well as related illnesses many years later. The final major piece is the Children's Peace Monument, which has a statue of Sadako surrounded by thousands of colorful paper origami cranes children from around the world send every year. These outdoor sites are somber, but they're manageable for most kids as long as they can be respectful and quiet. The real decision point is the Peace Memorial Museum. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. The museum is really intense. It shows photos of the city and people after the bomb dropped, and there are personal items that are even harder to see: mangled bikes, children's lunchboxes, the tatter uniforms of tweens who'd been working near the impact site as forced laborers. Later sections of the main exhibit show graphic photos of radiation poisoning effects years later. It's so intense that the day we visited somebody actually fainted in the main exhibit while we were there. So here's how we handled it. We gave our kids the choice of whether to go to the main exhibit at all, and we told them they could leave at any point. Our 8-year-old came through the opening room, which has a large scale projection of the city before and after the bomb, and that was enough for her. She decided to wait on a bench in the hall and reread Sadko on my phone, which was absolutely the right call for her, and a really respectful way to use that time. Our 11-year-old wanted to understand more, so he went through about half of the main exhibit before he had enough and joined his sister. Again, it was a good choice for him. He left right before some of the most devastating displays. And you know what? I'm really proud of how they both handled it. They knew their own limits and we respected their boundaries. If you've got younger kids, let's say, toddlers or preschoolers, I'd honestly recommend skipping the main museum exhibit entirely. It's just not a place for kids who can't be quiet and still, and there's nothing age appropriate about the content. There are a lot of fellow visitors for whom the bombing of Hiroshima is deeply personal and they might be experiencing emotions that don't align with having rowdy young kids around. But one thing to keep in mind is that there's a separate Hiroshima history exhibit on the second floor of the museum. It shows daily life before the bomb and the city's rebuilding afterward. There's nothing that's too graphic or upsetting in that room, and it's a much better option for younger children. One parent can take them there while the other sees the main exhibit, and then you can switch. There's also a cafe just outside around the corner. One last practical tip. Admission to the museum is free for kids and only 200 yen for adults. And you don't need to book ahead, so you can make your decision on the fly based on how everyone's feeling that day. So bottom line, yes, visiting Hiroshima with kids can absolutely be worth it, but it requires preparation, honest conversations, and being willing to adjust your plans based on what each kid can handle. The outdoor memorials alone are powerful and accessible for most families. The museum is optional and there's no shame in skipping it or doing a parent swap if that's what feels right. Travel isn't always about the fun Instagram moments. Sometimes it's about bearing witness to history and helping our kids understand the world even when it's hard. Hiroshima taught our kids that from terrible destruction can come lasting peace and even friendship, and that's a lesson worth the difficult day. That's it for today's Quick tip. If you want more details about our Japan trip, including where we stayed and what else we did, head over to thefamilyvoyage.com/japan or check the links down in the show notes and be sure to catch the previous episode all about planning Japan with kids. Safe travels everyone.