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by Fumiyasu Miyano and Yumi Kanazaki, Staff Writers

More than 13,000 photographs taken by Wakaji Matsumoto, who operated a photo studio in Hiroshima City before the atomic bombing and who died at 76 in 1965, were entrusted to the Hiroshima Municipal Archive by his bereaved family. The photographs are precious materials communicating Hiroshima’s cityscapes and citizens’ lives, which vanished due to the atomic bombing. The archive will organize the photographs in fiscal 2024 and post them on its website one by one.

Mr. Matsumoto was born in Jigozen Village (now part of Hatsukaichi City in Hiroshima Prefecture) and went to the United States in 1906. After learning photographic techniques, he returned to Japan and opened a photo studio near an intersection of Kamiya-cho (now part of Hiroshima’s Naka Ward) in 1927. As he moved to Jigozen Village for safety in 1942, his photographs escaped the fires of the atomic bombing. His panoramic photo showing the neighborhood of the Aioi Bridge is displayed on an entire wall of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in the city’s Naka Ward. Some of his photographs captured people’s daily lives, such as streetcars coming and going, street stalls, and people cracking oyster shells.

The Hiroshima Municipal Archive concluded an entrustment contract with Hitoshi Ouchi, 66, a resident of the city’s Naka Ward and grandson of Mr. Matsumoto, on December 21, 2023. The archive will make a list of the photographs after closely examining the time, date, and location of each photo as well as contents of the photographs. It will post the photographs on its digital archive system except for private photos depicting Mr. Matsumoto’s family and photographic portraits.

Mr. Ouchi expressed his hope, saying, “Through my grandfather’s photographs, I hope many people will feel people’s lives must never be robbed by war and nuclear weapons.”

(Originally published on January 19, 2024)