Peace Gallery
photographs, video, and film
Photos vividly depict Hiroshima before the atomic bombing
(Feb. 21, 2009)
by Masami Nishimoto and Junpei Fujimura, Staff Writers
A treasure trove of 2,000 photographs depicting Hiroshima before the atomic bombing has been donated to the municipal archives, and an exhibition is slated for sometime this year. The recently discovered photographs were taken by Wakaji Matsumoto, who ran a photography studio in the city center and died in 1965 at the age of 76. The photographs, which had been stored at his parents’ home in Hatsukaichi City, vividly capture life in Hiroshima before the atomic bombing and include 180-degree panorama shots. A representative of the municipal archives described the photos as “first-rate.”
The photos were taken over a period spanning nearly two decades from 1927 through March 1945, just a few months before the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Among them are several rare photos recording historic events that took place in Hiroshima in the first half of the 20th Century. One shows cheering citizens welcoming home the baseball team from Hiroshima Commercial High School after its victory at the national tournament in the summer of 1929. Another taken in 1936 depicts the first trade fair held at the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, now the Atomic Bomb Dome. Yet another photo shows a ceremony held to send off members of the Manchuria-Mongolia Youth Volunteer Corps in 1942.
Mr. Matsumoto, a native of Hatsukaichi, a city adjacent to Hiroshima, immigrated to Los Angeles in 1906. While making his living as a farmer, he mastered the latest photographic techniques, and in 1927 he returned to Japan with his family. He opened the Hiroshima Photography Studio in the city’s downtown Naka Ward, and with the permission of the Hiroshima Army Transport Division and other authorities he continued to take photographs in the city during its growing militarization. He also took photographs for various newspapers.
Mr. Matsumoto closed his studio in 1942 after Japan went to war with the U.S. and took his prints to his parents’ home in Hatsukaichi, thus saving them from destruction in the atomic bombing. Mr. Matsumoto’s grandson, Hitoshi Ouchi, 51, who lives in Hiroshima, said he confirmed the existence of a large quantity of photos last year, and after going through some of them informed the City of Hiroshima and others about his find.
Kazuhiko Takano, director of the municipal archives, said, “We only have about 200 photos of Hiroshima before the atomic bombing, including copies donated by private individuals. Both the quality and quantity of Mr. Matsumoto’s photographs are exceptional. I look forward to holding an exhibition so the public can see them.”
Panoramic photos taken by Wakaji Matsumoto in October 1927 of a sports festival at Jigozen Elementary School in Hatsukaichi and a funeral procession in front of the former prefectural office in Naka Ward were shown to Keiji Mitsui, curator at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.
“Despite the distance between the foreground and the background, the resolution of the photos is very high. The photographer clearly had good knowledge of photographic techniques and was experienced in using cameras,” Mr. Mitsui said. “Panoramic photos of this high quality from the early Showa Period [1926-1989] are very rare.” Mr. Matsumoto is believed to have used a swing-lens panoramic camera in which the lens pivots around a fixed point while the film is exposed.
[caption] Sports festival at Jigozen Elementary School in Hatsukaichi. This photo was taken on October 5, 1927, shortly after Mr. Matsumoto returned from the U.S. Like the lyrics to the school’s song, which say, “Let us open a window onto the world,” starting in the late 19th Century many residents of Jigozen immigrated to Hawaii and the U.S mainland. The two-story wooden school building was built in 1923 with donations from residents living in the U.S. and other places overseas. (The original print measures 116 cm by 25 cm.)
[caption] The city as seen from the former prefectural office. In the center behind the members of the funeral procession is the Hiroshima branch of the Bank of Japan, which was located across from the prefectural office in Naka Ward. In this area there were also residences of military officers, government officials, and the owners of major local stores. The Bank of Japan branch relocated to another location in Naka Ward in 1936. (The original print measures 93 cm by 25 cm.)
According to The History of Japanese Photography by Kotaro Iizawa, the first commercial photography studio in Japan opened in Tokyo in 1926. Why was Mr. Matsumoto, who worked in an outlying area, able to take not only panoramic photos, which required advanced technology, but also photos that incorporated the geometrical composition and style of close-ups that were popular in the West? The answer is tied to the history of Hiroshima.
Prior to World War II more people emigrated from Hiroshima than from any other prefecture in Japan. In fact, Mr. Matsumoto’s birthplace in Jigozen, a part of Hatsukaichi, was known as “Amerikamura” (“America Village”). In 1906, Mr. Matsumoto moved to the U.S. where his father had immigrated. In a register of Japanese living in the U.S. published in 1922, Wakaji is listed as a farmer living in Los Angeles and the owner of an automobile.
Mr. Matsumoto’s second daughter, Shizue Kawamoto, 83, a resident of Hatsukaichi, said, “I was told he learned about photography in the U.S.” His panoramic photos include shots of immigrant families working in the fields. In 1927 he returned to Japan with his wife and seven children, including the 2-year-old Shizue. He brought with him a high-priced camera, a model that was almost impossible to buy in Japan at the time and which he had purchased with his earnings.
In Japan, Mr. Matsumoto evidently earned a reputation for the photographic skills he had acquired in the U.S. He is listed as a photographer in the 1932 edition of Hiroshima’s business directory. His studio was located where the Sogo department store now stands. Like today, the area was then a bustling business district, and Mr. Matsumoto’s two-story studio was busy. “Dad was always running here and there taking pictures,” Shizue said. “My brothers, who later returned to the U.S. after they got out of school, helped him develop and print the photos.”
While Hiroshima grew as both a business and a military town, Mr. Matsumoto captured a variety of scenes on film, including events at the landmark Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall (now the Atomic Bomb Dome) and the army’s west parade ground (now the site of Hiroshima Municipal Stadium). He also photographed the citizens who turned out in droves to welcome the Hiroshima Commercial High School baseball team upon their triumphant return after capturing the title in the national tournament as well as a send-off for members of the Manchuria-Mongolia Youth Volunteer Corps, a venture that ended in tragedy.
But according to The History of Japanese Photography, after war broke out between Japan and the U.S. in 1941, photography was forbidden in Hiroshima in order to maintain military secrecy. As a result, Mr. Matsumoto’s studio went out of business. According to his daughter, in the spring of 1942, he loaded his photographic equipment and other supplies on a horse cart and brought them to his parents’ house in Jigozen. Thus his photographs were saved from destruction.
The atomic bomb destroyed the photos in the collections of the Chugoku Shimbun and the Hiroshima branches of other newspaper companies as well as those belonging to the approximately 40 photography studios, government offices and private individuals in the area. A search by the city’s archives for pictures depicting Hiroshima before the atomic bombing yielded fewer than 200 photographs, including those submitted by private citizens. That is one reason the staff of the archives regards Mr. Matsumoto’s recently discovered photos as “first-rate” and is eager to catalogue them and make them available to the public.
Mr. Matsumoto’s photos will bring new life to those who lived in Hiroshima before the atomic bombing.
(Originally published on January 3, 2009)
 The city's major intersection in Kamiya-cho in a photo taken from the second floor of the Hiroshima Photography Studio. Based on the type of streetcar, it is believed to have been taken around 1930. The road at right leads to city hall. |  November 1940 ceremony to mark the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of the nation. As in many other cities, local citizens joined a parade that passed by the former prefectural office in Naka Ward. |  Wakaji Matsumoto |
 Triumphal return. In August 1928 the baseball team of Hiroshima Commercial High School captured its second championship in the national tournament. The team was managed by Shuichi Ishimoto, who became the first manager of the Hiroshima Carp after the war. Crowds lined the streets for the August 22 victory parade from Hiroshima Station to the school in Naka Ward. A banner in the lower left bears the name of Motoharu Kaiyama, the team’s shortstop and cleanup hitter, who led the team to victory again the following year as its star player. |  The first sumo tournament held on the army’s west parade ground. Located on a site that now includes Hiroshima Municipal Stadium, the site was converted into a temporary sumo ring in October 1928, and 36 sumo wrestlers including yokozunas Miyagiyama and Tsunenohana battled for the Emperor’s Cup in an 11-day tournament. NHK’s Hiroshima station, which had opened earlier that year as the sixth NHK station in the country, provided live radio coverage of the event. |  Rally for the Rikken Seiyukai (Friends of Constitutional Government). The Rikken Seiyukai, one of the two main political parties in pre-war Japan, held a rally at a theater in Hiroshima. (Party president Tsuyoshi Inukai later became prime minister and was assassinated.) The General Election Law, enacted in 1925, had given all men 25 or over the right to vote. At the rally, voters listened eagerly to speeches by Yutaka Miyazawa, (father of former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa) and other party members who served in the Lower House of the Diet and were elected through the 1928 general election, the first following the law’s enactment. |
 Ceremony to send off members of the Manchuria-Mongolia Youth Volunteer Corps. The Hiroshima unit, consisting of 919 young men ages 13 and over, gathered in front of the Butokuden martial arts training center beside the prefectural office on February 15, 1942. After approximately two months of training, the unit was sent to the puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. The Youth Volunteer Corps was originally formed in 1938. Teachers took the lead in calling for volunteers, and Hiroshima continually ranked first or second nationwide in the number of corps members dispatched to Manchukuo. |  The intersection of Hondori and Densha-dori (a street on which a tram runs). The building is the Hiroshima branch of the Teikoku Sewing Machine Company, which faced the Ujina streetcar line. The company’s “Janome” sewing machines, which went on sale in 1935, became highly popular as the number of working women grew, and the shop was located along a street lined with banks. Beyond the old-fashioned street lights at the left lies the Shintenchi district. |  A European-style clothing shop on Aioi-dori. The “Lobanoff” of the “Lobanoff Dress Maker” sign refers to the Russian family that ran the store. A small number of Russians who fled their homeland amid the turmoil after the Russian Revolution came to Hiroshima via Kobe and other port cities. |
 The Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall seen from the far side of Aioi Bridge. The bridge, across which streetcars ran, was modified to a T-shape in 1934, linking it with Nakajima Hon-machi, the area where Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park now stands. Taken from an unusual angle, this photo shows the Industrial Promotion Hall seen from the Honkawa River. The wooden pedestrian bridge, which stood until 1939, around the time this photo was taken, is also visible in the background. |  First trade fair at the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. This photo shows the interior of the hall, which was destroyed in the atomic bombing. The August 1936 trade fair sponsored by the prefectural trade association also included importers operating in Manchukuo, Japan’s puppet state in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. Local products on sale included toweling, rubber products, and fountain pens. Japan’s national flag, its military flag, and the flag of Manchukuo are displayed throughout the hall. |  A farmer smoking a pipe. Mr. Matsumoto formed a group for local photography buffs, and they sometimes traveled around taking photographs. He took many portraits that captured the expressiveness of their subjects. |
 A poster for Mr. Matsumoto’s Hiroshima Photography Studio. The poster’s design featured a woman with a Japanese-style hairdo holding a book as seen through a paper screen. This design and the poster’s logo reflect Mr. Matsumoto’s enthusiasm for his work as a pioneer of commercial photography in Hiroshima. |  |  |
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