Osaka Peace Museum

On Saturday Morning I finally got the chance to go to Osaka. Emily, Andra and I followed John and his class on their field trip. The museum was a WWI museum. It is a localy funded place so the biggest portion of the museum was dedicated the Osaka bombings from the B-29 bombers (hope I remembered that correctly. The bottom half of the museum had pictures and memorabelia from the era. There were old propaganda newspapers, guns, diary entries talking about their inscription, etc. There was a VERY small space dedicated to the Pearl Harbor attack. There was a huge section on the atomic bombs. They had pictures of affected people.. (really nasty to see, made me kind of sad). They had pieces of melted debri which was cool to look at. We got to see an educational video that gets shown to elementary schoolers who visit there. This is where the different in educational systems are shown. The video was animated but is showed gore, violence, it didn't put the war in context, kind of put a bad light on the Americans, although we weren't actually mentioned by name. It portrayed the US as arbitrarally bombing all over Osaka, but as John's teacher taught us, they were strategically picked areas that were bombed (important gov. buildings, railways, etc.) I wouldn't go as far to say it is a propaganda video, but I can say that it is specifically made for little children to be scared, getting an emotional rise from students. My impression of the museum is so so.