Foreign Visitors to Hiroshima Peace Museum Surge after Obama Trip

Tokyo, June 27 (Jiji Press)--The number of visitors to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has risen some 40 pct from a year earlier since May 27, when U.S. President Barack Obama visited the facility. The number of visitors from overseas posted a rise of 55.5 pct. According to the operator, the number of visitors between May 28, the day after Obama visited the museum, and June 26 increased 38.8 pct from the same period last year to 156,684, with foreign visitors accounting for 30,139 of them. After June 9, when the museum put on display the four paper cranes brought by Obama and the message he left in the visitors' book, the overall number increased 50.2 pct. The daily number of foreign visitors rose significantly, jumping as much as almost threefold from the same day in the week a year before. Mitsuru Nishida, a museum official, said, "Not all foreign visitors to Hiroshima had visited us, but Obama's visit seems to have boosted attention on us." "The situation is uncertain with the higher yen, but I hope more foreign visitors will visit us," he also said. Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, almost 71 years after the two Japanese cities were devastated by U.S. atomic bombs in the closing days of World War II. He visited the museum after attending the Group of Seven summit held in the Ise-Shima area of the central Japan prefecture of Mie on May 26-27. END