"I'm now standing in front of the cenotaph for A-bomb victims in the Peace Park. The Peace Park feels as truly peaceful as its name suggests. There were bodies lying all about on the day, but nothing here now makes us feel the anguish produced by the bomb. The people at peace here today were not here then. What kind of life were those people leading here 21 years ago? What was the moment for them? Is there no way to revive the fading memory of several hundred thousand people?"

    The reporter seeks out people who were living in the district in those days. This area used to be Hiroshima's most vibrant downtown residential district, Nakajima. The program reproduces a map of how the rows of houses spread from where the cenotaph stands today, finding a sushi restaurant, a cardboard box maker, a coffee house, and the Goshiki Gekijo cinema.

Images of Contemporary Society: A Flash beyond the Eaves; Revival of an Epicenter District

Lasting Homage to the Dead, Wishes for World Peace
     The program evoked a powerful reaction and propagated the Ground Zero restoration movement in the course of a single evening in Hiroshima. The activities of the movement were televised nationwide in a documentary called Images of Contemporary Society: A Flash beyond the Eaves; Revival of an Epicenter District in the following year, 1967.
     It is said that about 20,000 citizens were living in the downtown area within a 500-meter radius of Ground Zero at that time, but only about ten were still thought to be alive when the program was produced 22 years after the bombing. The memories of the streets and their residents were about to be lost. [The results of the Ground Zero Restoration Movement revealed that in fact 56 former residents of the epicenter area were still alive in 1985.]
    The Ground Zero Restoration Movement continued for 8 years as a great civic movement for paying homage to the dead and a wish for world peace on the part of many citizens of Hiroshima.

NHK-Nagasaki Broadcasts "Missing Persons of the Bombing"
    In Nagasaki, a Ground Zero restoration movement grew up around the epicenter, Matsuyama-machi, and other communities in June, 1970. The Nagasaki City authorities commenced a full-scale study in 1971 and had achieved some tangible results by the fall of 1974. NHK-Nagasaki broadcast Missing Persons of the Bombing twice a week on radio and TV every Monday and Friday morning from July 1972 through September 1974. Inquiries were made into the whereabouts of 1,921 persons, and information on 490 was received.