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Atomic testament: Yoshito Matsushige and the first photos of Hiroshima’s nuclear toll

Bulletin, By David A. Wargowski | August 6, 2025

In the late morning hours of August 6, 1945, a single shutter clicked in Hiroshima and recorded what no camera had ever captured before, and none has again: the immediate, lived aftermath of a city annihilated by nuclear weapons.

Equipped with one camera and two rolls of film, totaling just 24 possible exposures, Yoshito Matsushige, then a 32-year-old photojournalist, ventured toward the city that morning to report for duty. Fires blocked access to his office, so he turned back and reached Miyuki Bridge (about 2,300 meters from ground zero) where he encountered the unfathomable: charred schoolgirls, civilians with melted skin, and a landscape of human agony.

He could barely bring himself to document it. But his five surviving images—the only known photographs of Hiroshima’s destruction on the day of the bombing itself—are among the most harrowing visual records of the nuclear age………………………………………………………………………………. https://thebulletin.org/2025/08/atomic-testament-yoshito-matsushige-and-the-first-photos-of-hiroshimas-nuclear-toll/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The%20first%20photos%20of%20Hiroshima%20s%20nuclear%20toll&utm_campaign=20250804%20Monday%20Newsletter%20%28Copy%29 

August 12, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history