August 6 in
Photography and Film
An atomic bomb is an indiscriminate
weapon of murder that kills both combatants and non-combatants and
people of any age and either gender. The damage is so massive that
it is very hard to tell afterwards exactly how much has been lost.
Only 5 monochromic photographs show the
terrible devastation of Hiroshima on the day of the atomic bombing.
The only other image documents are a movie film of the mushroom
cloud, starting 3 minutes after the bombing, and still pictures
of the cloud shot from within and outside the city.
The U.S. forces began shooting an official
film of the atomic bombing from an observation plane before the
bomb was dropped but the film could not be developed. The surviving
20 second film of the Hiroshima bombing was shot by the chief scientist
Harold Agnew, on another observation airplane, using his own 8 mm
camera.
In annihilating the city and population
of Hiroshima, the bomb made it all but impossible for any record
of that devastating moment to survive. The Occupation Forces designated
the horror as an item unsuitable for news coverage after Japan's
surrender under the strict press code. Who saw what at the moment
of the bombing? What on earth occurred? The realities of this
unprecedented, indiscriminate, and inhumane bombing were placed
under a tight seal.
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Radio Broadcasting Resumes At
9:00 a.m. the Very Next Day
In spite of the extraordinary devastation,
the local media strove to get their offices and facilities up
and running again quickly. Skeleton radio broadcasting resumed
at 9:00 a.m. on the following day, August 7, transmitting local
programming from the Hara Transmitting Station in the suburbs
of the city. The Chugoku Shimbun could not publish its August
7 morning edition, but resumed publication after a two days lapse
on August 9 by outsourcing printing. It was able to print its
own newspapers again from September 3, and returned to its main
offices in the still-devastated city in November.
NHK-Hiroshima continued transmitting radio
programs from the Hara Transmitting Station after the end of the
war but returned to the broadcasting station located in the still
largely flattened Nagaregawa district of central Hiroshima on
September 9, 1946. Citizens of Hiroshima gave a warm welcome home
to the radio station as a harbinger of postwar reconstruction.
For 60 years, NHK, as the public broadcaster
of the only country to have been attacked by atomic weapons, has
sought to throw light on the reality of the devastation, discover
the facts of the bombings, describe the truths of the nuclear
age, and give voice to the thoughts, campaigns and other activities
of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in their ardent desire
for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
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- Yoshito Matsushige, a photographer working for
the Chugoku Shimbun, took 5 pictures of A-bomb victims.
(Near Nishizume, Miyukibashi, 2 km from the epicenter,
and other places.)
- Pictures of the mushroom cloud (from inside and
outside the city)
- Agnew's approx. 20-second monochromatic 8mm film
started 3 minutes after the bombing.
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