You can walk in at 13:00.
In English. For nothing.

13:00 to 14:00, every day, East Building Basement 1. Sixty minutes. Free. No reservation of any kind, and no museum ticket. It runs every day the museum is open — the exceptions are 30–31 December and the mid-February exhibit-change closure (15–20 February 2027).

You do not need a group, a tour, a booking reference or an interpreter. You need to be in the basement of the East Building at five to one. That is the entire requirement, and it is the single most valuable free thing available in this city.

The Japanese-language sessions run at 10:00, 11:30 and 14:30 on the same basis. If you are in the park anyway, the timing works cleanly with an early museum entry: do the galleries first, break at 13:00 for the talk, then walk the outdoor monuments afterwards when the coach traffic has thinned.

The daily English talk is delivered by a denshosha — an "A-bomb legacy successor": a trained non-survivor who has spent years learning one specific survivor's testimony and delivers it in the first person. Say it plainly rather than discovering it in the room, because the framing matters.

The arithmetic explains the programme. As of 31 March 2026 there were 91,105 hibakusha in Japan, and their average age was 86.66 (national government figures, as reported by the Chugoku Shimbun). The generation that can say "I was there" is closing, and Hiroshima built the successor programme rather than let the testimony stop.

Do not treat a denshosha session as a consolation prize. It is a rehearsed, verified, first-person account delivered by someone who chose to carry it, and it is the form in which this testimony will exist for the rest of your lifetime. If you specifically want to hear a survivor speak in English, watch for the museum's 6 August sessions: in 2026 they included survivor testimony and discussion in English at the International Conference Center. The 2027 programme has not been announced — the 6 August page covers the day.

Booking is through hpmm-testimony.jp, the museum's testimony-request system. Sessions run 60 minutes and cost nothing. Requests open one year ahead, on the same date, and the practical floor is one month — later than that and the answer is generally no. Sessions are not held on 6 August.

Three things catch people out. First, for survivor testimony an interpreter is necessary and you arrange it yourself; the museum does not supply one with the booking. Second, a survivor or successor can come to your hotel rather than you going to them, up to 19:00. Third, the room has changed: since 1 June 2026 the museum's own basement conference rooms are no longer used, and the museum assigns a room in its Memorial Hall, the National Peace Memorial Hall or the International Conference Center.

The minimum group size is not published. We could not verify a number, and we are not going to invent one: ask when you request, and do not assume a couple will be refused or accepted. If you are travelling alone or as a pair, the 13:00 walk-in talk removes the question entirely.