Documenting Hiroshima of 1946: In January, aerial photographs show vast expanse of scorched ruins
Jan. 3, 2025
by Kyosuke Mizukawa, Senior Staff Writer
In January 1946, William Jones, a photographer for the U.S. military, took aerial photographs of Hiroshima City. Pointing his camera south from the north side of Tokiwa Bridge, located around 1.5 kilometers northeast of the hypocenter, he witnessed a vast expanse of scorched ruins. Most of the buildings located within a two-kilometer radius of the hypocenter were completely destroyed and burned to the ground.
Later, Mr. Jones donated the photos, which he had kept himself, to the National Museum of the United States Air Force. In 2017, when he was 91, he was interviewed by the staff of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward), who were visiting the United States in an effort to collect materials. He said that he had been ordered to take photos of Hiroshima at the end of December 1945, while deployed at an airport in Fukuoka. He described his impressions of viewing the city from the air, in the following way.
“And when I saw the damage, it was devastating … When I realized the deaths there, it made me very sad. I’m not proud of the fact that we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although it did end the war.”
“And I wondered, ‘Why? Why war? Why?’ I cannot understand it.” He described how he had cried at that time seeing the inhumanity of people, crying out many times.
Mr. Jones’s photos also include Hiroshima Station, which had avoided complete destruction. On the ground, citizens were suffering terribly, a situation not visible from the air. The Chugoku Shimbun published on January 8, 1946, reported about how six orphans were living around the area surrounding a free resting place located in front of the station, indicating, without revealing their names, that the orphans had stayed overnight and shivered from the cold.
A 16-year-old boy, who was raised at a clock shop in the city, had lost his parents and grandmother in the bombing. He did not have relatives to rely on, because all members of the relatives’ family also had died in the bombing. He spent some days without eating a single grain of rice. “It is very cold at night, and I can’t sleep at all. Sometimes, I dream of my mother,” said the youth.
A 14-year-old boy had experienced an air raid in Okayama City, where he was living, in June of that year, and his mother went missing. His father had already passed away. He came to Hiroshima to rely on relatives, but he was unable to meet up with them because they all seemed to have died in the bombing. With that, he began living in front of the station. “I want to have food, clothing, and a little money. Today, a young woman I didn’t know gave me a rice ball, which was delicious,” described the youth.
(Originally published on January 3, 2025)
In January 1946, William Jones, a photographer for the U.S. military, took aerial photographs of Hiroshima City. Pointing his camera south from the north side of Tokiwa Bridge, located around 1.5 kilometers northeast of the hypocenter, he witnessed a vast expanse of scorched ruins. Most of the buildings located within a two-kilometer radius of the hypocenter were completely destroyed and burned to the ground.
Later, Mr. Jones donated the photos, which he had kept himself, to the National Museum of the United States Air Force. In 2017, when he was 91, he was interviewed by the staff of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward), who were visiting the United States in an effort to collect materials. He said that he had been ordered to take photos of Hiroshima at the end of December 1945, while deployed at an airport in Fukuoka. He described his impressions of viewing the city from the air, in the following way.
“And when I saw the damage, it was devastating … When I realized the deaths there, it made me very sad. I’m not proud of the fact that we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although it did end the war.”
“And I wondered, ‘Why? Why war? Why?’ I cannot understand it.” He described how he had cried at that time seeing the inhumanity of people, crying out many times.
Mr. Jones’s photos also include Hiroshima Station, which had avoided complete destruction. On the ground, citizens were suffering terribly, a situation not visible from the air. The Chugoku Shimbun published on January 8, 1946, reported about how six orphans were living around the area surrounding a free resting place located in front of the station, indicating, without revealing their names, that the orphans had stayed overnight and shivered from the cold.
A 16-year-old boy, who was raised at a clock shop in the city, had lost his parents and grandmother in the bombing. He did not have relatives to rely on, because all members of the relatives’ family also had died in the bombing. He spent some days without eating a single grain of rice. “It is very cold at night, and I can’t sleep at all. Sometimes, I dream of my mother,” said the youth.
A 14-year-old boy had experienced an air raid in Okayama City, where he was living, in June of that year, and his mother went missing. His father had already passed away. He came to Hiroshima to rely on relatives, but he was unable to meet up with them because they all seemed to have died in the bombing. With that, he began living in front of the station. “I want to have food, clothing, and a little money. Today, a young woman I didn’t know gave me a rice ball, which was delicious,” described the youth.
(Originally published on January 3, 2025)
