(Total of 17: 10 negatives and 7 prints)
On the day of Hiroshima’s devastation in the atomic bombing, Yoshito Matsushige took five photos that were the only images to have captured in graphic detail the scenes of victims of the unprecedented disaster. Mr. Matsushige worked in the photography department of the Chugoku Shimbun, the head office of which was located in the city’s downtown area, and also served as a member of the media team at the Chugoku Military District Headquarters in Hiroshima.
Two of the five photos he took that day captured images of wounded citizens at the west end of Miyuki Bridge in Hiroshima on August 6 (YMATSUSHIGE0001, 0002) and were published for the first time in the July 6, 1946, issue of the Yukan Hiroshima, a local evening newspaper that had been launched by a Chugoku Shimbun affiliated company. In 1952, when the occupation of Japan by the General Headquarters of the Allied Powers (GHQ) was lifted, the world-renowned photographic publication Life Magazine, in its September 29 issue, introduced the photos taken at the west end of Miyuki Bridge at the top of the magazine’s special photographic series featuring documentary photos of the atomic bombing, describing it as the first public release of such images in the United States. Mr. Matsushige stored the negatives of the photos at his home and later entrusted their storage and management to the Chugoku Shimbun, based on a transfer agreement with the newspaper signed in 1998. In 2021, the Hiroshima City government designated the five negatives of Mr. Matsushige’s photos taken on August 6, 1945, as important tangible cultural properties, the storage for which the Chugoku Shimbun entrusted to the Japan Photo Archive.
The Chugoku Shimbun also has in its archives a photographic print of the mushroom cloud taken by Seiso Yamada, a part-time worker in the company at the time of the atomic bombing who, after the war, became a full-time, regular employee in the company’s head office, as well as prints taken by Yoshie Yamamoto and Nagaji Tanigawa, both of whom were regular employees of the Chugoku Shimbun. Mr. Yamada’s photo (SYAMADA0001) was taken from the town of Fuchu-cho, Hiroshima Prefecture, located around 6.5 kilometers to the northeast of the hypocenter. Assumed to have been taken only around two minutes after the A-bomb’s detonation, the photo was the earliest taken of the mushroom cloud from ground level. It was carried in the U.S. Life Magazine alongside Mr. Matsushige’s photos.
- Chugoku Shimbun Hiroshima Peace Media Center “Atomic bombing as seen from photographs”
- What Happened Underneath the Mushroom Cloud?”
Contact: peacemedia@chugoku-np.co.jp