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was a Japanese 
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.Iwakura.
File:Miyuki-bashi Nishi-zume, Senda-machi San-chohme, Hiroshima City - around 1100 on 6 August 1945 - Matsushige Yoshito.png, A scene in Hiroshima around 11:00 on 6 August 1945
File:Miyuki-bashi Nishi-zume, Senda-machi San-choume, Hiroshima - after 1100 on 6 August 1945.png, A scene in Hiroshima after 11:00 on 6 August 1945
File:Matsushige's house - Midori-machi Hiroshima - around 1400, 6 August 1945.png, Matsushige's family barber shop after atomic bombing (around 14:00 on 6 August 1945)
File:View of Midori-machi Hiroshima seen from Matsushige's house - around 1400, 6 August 1945.png, View seen from Matsushige's house (around 14:00 on 6 August 1945)
File:Near Ujina-sen Densha Magari-kado, Hiroshima - around 1700 on 6 August 1945.png, A scene in Hiroshima around 17:00 on 6 August 1945
File:A camphor tree fallen by atomic bomb's blast - around in October 1945.png, A
Testimony of Yoshito Matsushige
Yoshito Matsushige obituary (Japan Times, 18 Jan2005)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Matsushige, Yoshito Japanese photojournalists 1913 births 2005 deaths Hibakusha People from Kure, Hiroshima 20th-century Japanese photographers
photojournalist
Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (suc ...
who survived the dropping of the atomic bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...
on the city of Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has b ...
on 6 August 1945 and took five photographs
A photograph (also known as a photo, or more generically referred to as an ''image'' or ''picture'') is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor. The process and pra ...
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
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has b ...
in 1913. He took a job at 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.Iwakura.
Selected photos
camphor tree
''Camphora officinarum'' is a species of evergreen tree indigenous to warm temperate to subtropical regions of East Asia, including countries such as China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. It is known by various names, most notably the camph ...
fallen by atomic bomb's blast
File:View of Hiroshima in October 1945.png, View of Hiroshima in October 1945
References
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 byKen Domon
was a celebrated Japanese photographer known for his work as a photojournalist and as a photographer of Buddhist temples and statuary.
Domon, who began his career in the 1930s contributing photo reportages to magazines that supported the increas ...
, 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
Testimony of Yoshito Matsushige
Yoshito Matsushige obituary (Japan Times, 18 Jan2005)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Matsushige, Yoshito Japanese photojournalists 1913 births 2005 deaths Hibakusha People from Kure, Hiroshima 20th-century Japanese photographers