Winnipeg Hiroshima Exhibit a Big Success

From March 1 to March 14, Fort Garry Place Mall was the site of an exhibit documenting the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. A coalition of peace, community and disarmament organizations hosted the exhibit which is on permanent loan from the Hiroshima Peace Park Museum to the Veterans for Peace in the United States. The two weeks of the exhibit were highly successful. Organizers estimated that about 3,000 people had viewed the exhibit by the time it closed. About half that number were secondary school students.

The exhibit's more than 240 feet of panels record the results of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in both pictures and words. Visitors left their comments in writing. In addition to the exhibit, there was a "peace wall" on which visitors could leave their own artwork and poetry. There was an evening program each night at 7:30 p.m.

While the exhibit documented the events of August 6 and 8, 1945 and their aftermath, its message was not just historical. Its showing in Winnipeg was linked to the work of many groups, organizations and individuals who continue to press for the disarmament of all the world's nuclear powers.

More than 40 years after the dropping of the atomic bomb - and despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact - the desire for peaceful relations between countries and peoples remains elusive. The arms race, war and the possibility of nuclear war remain among the major problems of our time.