1 Best Sight in Western Honshu, Japan

Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims

Naka-ku

The memorial recounts the stories of known victims of the atomic devastation. In addition to the extensive archives of names, a collection of personal photos lends immediacy to one of the most shocking moments in history. A spiraling ramp leads downward to the Hall of Remembrance, a sobering 360-degree panorama of Hiroshima after the war. It is only up close that one sees that the photorealistic view is actually a collage of 140,000 black and white tiles, the number of people estimated to have died in the blast and in the months following. Heartbreaking firsthand accounts and memoirs of survivors are available for viewing.