Yoshito Matsushige (松重美人) (1913–2005) was a
Japanese photojournalist who survived the dropping of
the
atomic bomb on the city of
Hiroshima on
6 August
1945 and took five
photographs on the day of the bombing in
Hiroshima, the only photographs taken that day within Hiroshima
that are known.
Matsushige
was born in Kure, Hiroshima
in 1913. He took a job in a newspaper after
finishing school and in 1943 entered the photography section of the
newspaper
Chugoku
Shimbun.
Matsushige was at home 2.7 km south of the
hypocentre at the time of the explosion. He was
not seriously injured, and determined to go to the city centre. A
fire forced him back to Miyuki bridge, where the scene of desperate
and dying people prevented him from using his camera for twenty
minutes, when he took two frames at about 11:00. He tried again
later that day but was too nauseated to take more than three more
frames. The first two frames are of people who escaped serious
injury next to Miyuki bridge; the second of these is taken closer
up and shows them having cooking oil applied to their burns. A
third shows a policeman, his head bandaged, issuing certificates to
civilians. The last pair are taken close to home: one of the damage
to his family's barbershop, and another out of his window.
Matsushige was unable to develop the film for twenty days, and even
then had to do so at night and in the open, rinsing it in a stream.
The negatives had severely deteriorated by the 1970s, requiring
intensive restoration work.
Notes
- Ryuichi Kaneko, "The Half-Life of Awareness: Photographs of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki", 21–22.
- Descriptions summarized from Tsutomu Iwakura, "The Need for a
Photographic and Motion Picture Museum for Peace", 13.
- Iwakura, 13.
- Iwakura.
Further reading
- Iwakura Tsutomu. "The Need for a Photographic and Motion
Picture Museum for Peace". Kaku: Hangenki,
pp. 12–14.
- Kaku: Hangenki (核:半減期) / The Half Life of
Awareness: Photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tokyo: Tokyo
Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 1995. Exhibition catalogue;
captions and text in both Japanese and English. Three photographs
by Matsushige are reproduced (other works are by Ken Domon, Toshio
Fukada, Kikujirō
Fukushima, Shigeo Hayashi,
Kenji Ishiguro, Shunkichi Kikuchi, Mitsugi Kishida, Eiichi Matsumoto, Shōmei Tōmatsu, Hiromi Tsuchida and Yōsuke Yamahata).
- Kaneko Ryuichi. "The Half-Life of Awareness: Photographs of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki". Kaku: Hangenki,
pp. 21–24.
External links