"The Hiroshima Panels," which depict the hell victims experienced in the aftermath of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city, continue to draw viewers ahead of next month's 80th anniversary of the bombing.
"These are paintings that allow everybody living on Earth in this nuclear age to imagine (the bombing) as a future that could happen to them," said Yukinori Okamura, 51, curator at the gallery that exhibits the work. "I want visitors to feel memories of history that speak to us on a life-size scale."
The work, consisting of 15 folding panels, was painted by the late artist couple Iri and Toshi Maruki. Fourteen of the panels are exhibited at the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels in Higashimatsuyama, Saitama Prefecture, with the remaining one at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki, the other city that the United States dropped an atomic bomb on in August 1945.
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