The problem
History textbooks sometimes create enemies.
Two countries teach the same war separately. I asked a different question: can an immersive experience build empathy instead?
Don’t show the violence.
Let the objects speak.
The rule the whole project follows. No blood and no bodies appear in any scene.
The narrator of the Gaza chapter: a journalist’s camera, rebuilt in 3D from one photograph.
My solution
Let an object tell the story.
In VR, the student meets an object that was left behind. It tells its owner’s story in its own voice. No blood and no bodies are shown.
Why I am making this
I grew up in eastern India, near the border with Bangladesh. My childhood was full of the stories of people who crossed over during the 1971 war. For me this research is not abstract data. It continues a habit of listening to survivors.
A photograph becomes a place. An object in it starts to talk.
- 1
Listen to testimony
Every story starts from a survivor’s documented account.
- 2
Meet the object
A historical photograph is turned into a 360° space. An object from that scene is waiting inside.
- 3
See through its eyes
The object tells its owner’s story from its own point of view.
- 4
Learn for the future
Students in each country experience the other country’s history.
Nagasaki, 1945 長崎
Noboru Murata’s account of surviving the atomic bombing as a middle school student, and of losing his friends.
Dhaka, 1971 ダッカ
Dr. Meghna Guhathakurta’s account of being ten years old in March 1971, watching soldiers enter her family’s compound and take her father away.
Who writes the object’s words?
GPT gives the object its voice, but it does not invent the story. It works from two real inputs: documented survivor testimony, and the words and feelings that earlier visitors said stayed with them.
Tested in four places so far
The project is still running. These are short notes from each place, not final results.
Workshop
India
Students already knew the facts of the Nagasaki bombing: when, where and who. After the VR they said they felt they had lived a survivor’s life. Some were in tears.
Exhibition, 2025
Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum
Shown to the public and to parents. Parents said they could show it to their children because it has no cruel scenes and no blood.
Workshop
Nagano
With junior high and high school students. A door told a girl’s story from 1971. 11 of 12 students named atmosphere and perspective as the strongest parts.
Pilot
Tokyo
The background sound made the scene feel real. People enjoyed hearing the story from an object’s point of view.
What I am working on now
The next narrator is a journalist’s camera in Gaza.
I rebuilt the camera as a 3D character from a single photograph, and its lens became its face.
- 1
Cut the camera out of the photo
Adobe Photoshop
- 2
AI builds the 3D shape
TRELLIS
- 3
The lens becomes a face
Blender
- 4
It speaks inside VR
Unity
The AI only saw one photograph. The front is close to the real camera. The back is the model’s guess, not a measurement.
Photos: taken by the author. Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, 2025.