Jun 26 02:20 AM US/EasternNAHA, Japan, June 26 (AP) - (Kyodo) — The Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum said Friday it will begin later this year inviting over staffers from Cambodia's Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum for workshops on running peace museums.
Under a three-year project, the Okinawa museum will invite over three staffers every year from the museum in Phnom Penh, which was used as a political prison by the Khmer Rouge government that ruled Cambodia from 1975 and 1979.
They will receive instruction for a month on how to make a database of materials and better display items for exhibition under the project undertaken by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the foreign aid body of the Japanese government, the museum said.
The Okinawa museum, located in the city of Itoman on the southern tip of Okinawa Island, has preserved and displayed a large number of articles and records of individual experiences in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa in the closing days of World War II in the Pacific theater.
The Okinawa Prefectural Peace Museum will also send several curators to Cambodia every year to provide two weeks of field lessons to the Cambodian museum staff.
In May, JICA signed an agreement with Cambodia to help it develop skills to better manage and operate the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
Cells and buildings at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum are preserved as they were left after the Khmer Rouge was driven out of Cambodia in Leg irons and torture instruments as well as photos of detainees are on display there.
In Cambodia, an increasing number of young people have no direct knowledge about the tragic history under the Khmer Rouge's rule.
Okinawa museum director Yoshiko Okawa said it matches with her museum's concept -- passing on the memory of the tragic Okinawa battle -- to convey Cambodia's experiences 30 years ago to the next generation.
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