Hiroshima A-bomb museum draws record visitors in FY 2016 via Kyodo

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum drew a record of nearly 1.6 million visitors in the year ending March, with visitor numbers rising in the wake of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s May visit.

As of Friday, the number of visitors eclipsed the previous record of 1,593,280 set in fiscal 1999, and the figure is likely to reach around 1.73 million by the end of March, the museum said.

Following Obama’s visit to the city as the first sitting U.S. leader in late May last year, the number of visitors to the museum rose 40 percent from a year earlier in June and July.

The museum had planned to stop displaying paper cranes presented by Obama but decided to continue the popular exhibit as it attracted many to the museum.

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Museum director Kenji Shiga attributed the rise in the number of visitors to the display of the cranes dedicated by Obama and the popularity of “Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni”(In this corner of the world), a Japanese animated film set in Hiroshima before and during World War II.

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