(Total of 218: 34 negatives, 152 prints, and 32 glass dry plates)
These 218 photographs were taken by 13 photographers and one organization. The materials are composed of prints collected by the Association of Photographers of the Atomic Bomb Destruction of Hiroshima (hereinafter, referred to as the “photographers association”), an organization formed in 1978, as well as photographic negatives that had been kept by photographer members of the photographers association. A defining characteristic of the photos is that they were taken by people in Hiroshima City or its vicinity who recorded the conditions they themselves witnessed immediately after the bombing.
The photographers were made up of young people who had been mobilized to work at military facilities, prefectural government employees, and those engaged in photography work while serving in the Japanese military during the war. The collection includes photos of the mushroom cloud taken from the closest distance (around 2.7 kilometers from the hypocenter) on the day of the bombing (TFUKADA0001–0004), the city in flames (GKIMURA0007), the devastated central area of the city taken the day after the bombing (MKISHIDA0002–0004), severely burned victims with charred skin (MONUKA0001–0004), and a visual record of the acute effects of radiation (GKIMURA0011–0017). A photo taken on August 9 recorded the chaos of a temporary relief station as it overflowed with the wounded (YKAWAHARA0001).
The prints are currently in the possession of the Hiroshima City government and archived at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which is managed by the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. While the whereabouts of the original negatives of many of the prints have not been confirmed, original negatives of photos taken by Mitsugi Kishida, Gonichi Kimura, and Toshio Fukuda were later donated to the Hiroshima City government by the photographers themselves or by their family members. The work of preserving the negatives is currently entrusted to the Japan Photo Archive, which is operated by the Japan Professional Photographers Society at the Sagamihara Conservation Center of the National Film Archive of Japan, located in Sagamihara City. In addition, negatives taken by Isao Kita, who worked at the Hiroshima District Meteorological Observatory, were donated to the Hiroshima City Ebayama Museum of Meteorology, where they are currently archived. The glass dry plates of Yoshita Kishimoto’s photos were entrusted by his bereaved family to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where they are currently stored.
Of 16 photos taken by Mr. Kimura, eight not collected by the photographers association have been added to this collection of materials. All of these materials were collected and taken back to the United States after the war by members of U.S. military survey teams that had been in Japan after the war to study the effects of the atomic bombing. The materials were returned to Japan from the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in 1973.
- Striving to fill voids in Hiroshima, evidence of victims remains 76 years after atomic bombing-Photos of A-bombing destruction
- Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Peace Database
Contact: peacemedia@chugoku-np.co.jp