VOX POPULI: Rare photos of Hiroshima A-bombing show grim aftermath
There are few photographs left today that show what Hiroshima looked like immediately after the U.S. bomber Enola Gay dropped its nuclear payload on the city on Aug. 6, 1945.
Of the pictures taken that day to graphically record the horrendous fate met by Hiroshima's citizens, only five film negatives still survive.
They are all the works of Yoshito Matsushige (1913-2005), a photographer with the local daily newspaper The Chugoku Shimbun.
Matsushige, who was 32 at the time, lived 2.8 kilometers from ground zero. Blown off his feet by the nuclear blast and bleeding from shards of broken window panes, he grabbed his camera and headed to the city.
A toddler clung to its mother who could not move. A woman kept shouting her child's name.
Faced with hordes of people with burnt skin and hair, Matsushige hesitated to release the shutter.
'Please forgive me,' he murmured in his heart as he steeled himself to do his job.
The results are five black-and-white photographs that can be seen today.
The silent witnesses show us a perspective that is decisively lacking from any aerial photo of the mushroom cloud taken from above.
Matsushige's photos embody the 'suffering Hiroshima' its citizens gazed up at from under the mushroom cloud, not the Hiroshima as seen from the sky by the people who dropped the bomb.
Some people may wonder about the scarcity of photos that remain. But far too many lives were wiped out by the bomb. The Chugoku Shimbun lost one-third of its workers—or 114 people.
After World War II, the military incinerated many pictures, the disposal of some was regulated by the General Headquarters for the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ).
At the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, an exhibition of rare, valuable photos opened on May 31.
Titled 'Hiroshima 1945: Special Exhibition 80 Years after Atomic Bombing,' it highlights these weighty words of one of the photographers: 'As a record, may our photographs remain final forever.'
—The Asahi Shimbun, June 3
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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.
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