KUALA LUMPUR, June 25 -- The story of how Muzium Negara came to be is pretty dramatic as it involves an American Boeing B-29 bomber plane in 1945.

In March of that year, the American bomber was aiming for the railway yards in then-Japanese occupied Kuala Lumpur but missed and struck the Selangor Museum instead.

That bombing during World War II destroyed the original museum built in 1907 .What followed was nearly a decade of cultural "void."

"There was only a temporary structure after that, just one small building put up in 1953," said Nor Hanisah Ahmad, deputy director of Muzium Negara.

"We didn't have a proper museum until after Merdeka," she added.

After independence in 1957, then-Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman believed the youn...