pictures from hiroshima

August 1928: Hiroshima celebrates the triumphant return of its high school baseball team, which has just won its second national championship. - photographed by Wakaji Matsumoto

The U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an 8,900 pound uranium bomb on the city of Hiroshima this day, August 6, 1945. The bomb killed 70,000 human beings instantly, and up to another 70,000 died of injuries and radiation poisoning over the next five years.

But Hiroshima did not begin and end on that day and in that moment. The city lived long before, and lives again today.

There are many pictures of the devastation after that first atomic bomb attack in human history, including these at the Boston Globe's The Big Picture blog, but until recently not many of the city before the bomb, as most of the pictures of the city had been destroyed in the blast, and as few as 200 photographs of the city were thought to exist. This past year, however, over 2,000 images from Hiroshima-area photographer Wakaji Matsumoto, taken between 1927 and March 1945, were donated to the city's municipal archives. Some of the images are available online at the Hiroshima Peace Media Center.

The pictures are particularly powerful because they tell the story of a vibrant city that shared very much in common with the cities in the United States. From the large parade for the victorious hometown high school baseball team to the streetcars outside of the city center, this was a place where people lived and thrived, suffered setback and won triumphs. It was, in short, a city.

How such great photos were taken in the first place is also particularly powerful, because it speaks to the connection between the city which was eventually targeted by the U.S. military as a way to quickly end the war and the United States itself. From the Hiroshima Peace Media Center:

According to The History of Japanese Photography by Kotaro Iizawa, the first commercial photography studio in Japan opened in Tokyo in 1926. Why was Mr. Matsumoto, who worked in an outlying area, able to take not only panoramic photos, which required advanced technology, but also photos that incorporated the geometrical composition and style of close-ups that were popular in the West? The answer is tied to the history of Hiroshima.

Prior to World War II more people emigrated from Hiroshima than from any other prefecture in Japan. In fact, Mr. Matsumoto’s birthplace in Jigozen, a part of Hatsukaichi, was known as “Amerikamura” (“America Village”). In 1906, Mr. Matsumoto moved to the U.S. where his father had immigrated. In a register of Japanese living in the U.S. published in 1922, Wakaji is listed as a farmer living in Los Angeles and the owner of an automobile.

Mr. Matsumoto’s second daughter, Shizue Kawamoto, 83, a resident of Hatsukaichi, said, “I was told he learned about photography in the U.S.” His panoramic photos include shots of immigrant families working in the fields. In 1927 he returned to Japan with his wife and seven children, including the 2-year-old Shizue. He brought with him a high-priced camera, a model that was almost impossible to buy in Japan at the time and which he had purchased with his earnings.

The bomb that destroyed the city was not the only thing that tied Hiroshima and its people to the United States. As is usually the case, there are many things that tie us all together, though these connections are often easy to miss when we allow hatred and fear to focus us only on divisions and differences.

Thanks to Dawn and Karl for telling me about these photos, and the extraordinary stories surrounding them.