Trove of A-bomb photos unearthed

Hundreds of photos tucked away in a file kept at the National Archives in Britain and hidden from public view for decades shed new light on the aftermath of the devastation caused by the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Some 500 photos believed to have been taken by British occupying forces were recently uncovered by a filmmaker and atomic bombing survivor.

"The existence of the photos had never previously been known," said Yoshitoshi Fukahori, 80, chairman of the Committee for Research of Photographs and Materials of the Atomic Bombing at Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace.

Masaaki Tanabe, a 71-year-old A-bomb survivor and filmmaker who heads Knack Images Production Center in Hiroshima, obtained copies of the photos this summer.

The pictures were pasted in a file titled "Effects of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on reinforced structures, 1945-1948."

Tanabe had been searching for photos of Hiroshima taken before and after the city's atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945.

He planned to use them for a film project involving the use of computer graphics to re-create an image of ground zero and the surrounding area, now the site for Peace Memorial Park, as it appeared before the event.

The project is aimed at driving home the horror of nuclear weapons to a global audience.

He plans to present the film to delegates of nuclear powers who will attend the Review Conference of the Parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in New York in May.

The photos Tanabe obtained indicate that British forces were studying in detail the impact of the atomic bomb, which only the United States possessed at that time.

About 100 of the images were taken in Hiroshima and the rest in Nagasaki, according to Tanabe.

One of the photos of Nagasaki shows Yamazato national school, what is now Yamazato Elementary School, behind the Ohashi bridge over the Urakamigawa river. The three-story reinforced concrete school stood about 700 meters from the center of the explosion.

Only four of 32 teachers and staff who were in school survived the bombing on Aug. 9 in 1945, three days after the atomic blast in Hiroshima. About 1,300 of 1,581 children perished.

Another photo shows the crumbled walls of Urakami prison, which was located about 300 meters from ground zero. The death toll in the prison stood at 134.

The ravaged remains of Urakami Cathedral, which was about 500 meters away from the hypocenter, also appears in a photo. It shows the destroyed building, chunks of concrete and charred trees, suggesting it was taken shortly after the end of war, as debris had yet to be cleared.

Fukahori said that photo was "rare" because it included children.

The latest discovery, he said, would help turn up many more photos kept in archives elsewhere that were previously inaccessible to the public.

Advocates for disarmament say U.S. President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize this year for working toward a nuclear-free world will help efforts to locate historical photos buried in archives around the world.

Among photos of Hiroshima were about 10 taken in the district known as Nakajima, which was sandwiched between the Hongawa river and the Motoyasugawa river. The district, now part of the Peace Memorial Park, was the busiest section of the city before the war.

One of the photos of Nakajima shows its northern tip, known as Jizenjibana, where landfills near the rivers had crumbled, presumably from the impact of an extremely powerful typhoon in September 1945.

The photo also showed houses crudely put together with wood, indicating fledgling efforts to rebuild the devastated city.

The photos of Hiroshima include an aerial view of the Aioibashi bridge, which the Enola Gay B-29 superfortress supposedly used as a target when dropping the atomic bomb. Other photos show toppled tombstones and a concrete school building with a charred ceiling.

Tanabe urged the public to contact Knack Images Production Center at 082-292-9401 for any information on never-before-seen photos taken right before and after the bombing of Hiroshima.(IHT/Asahi: November 18,2009)