In our era of instantaneous world-wide news coverage, it is difficult to comprehend that it took many years for detailed accounts and images of the August 1945 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to reach a global audience. During the Allied occupation of Japan from the end of the war until 1952, reporting on the effects of the atomic bomb was strictly prohibited. A groundbreaking piece in The New Yorker in 1946 provided the first detailed coverage in the American press. “The Hiroshima Panels” — a series of paintings begun by Japanese artists Iri and Toshi Maruki in 1950 — were exhibited in twenty countries over the course of ten years beginning in 1953, the first globally available account from a Japanese perspective.
Amherst College Archives & Special Collections holds several books that document and respond to the bombing, particularly as seen by Japanese photographers working in the 1950s and beyond. Photography was a major component of student protest and other social movements in post-War Japan; these small, inexpensive photo books stand in contrast to the more expensive works such as Ken Domon’s oversize hardcover book Hiroshima (1958) or 11:02 Nagasaki (1966).
The following items are on display in Frost Library from August 6 through Monday, October 13. All are held by the Archives & Special Collections and are available for consultation in the Archives Reading Room on Frost Library Level A.
- John Hersey. “A Reporter at Large: Hiroshima” The New Yorker. August 31, 1946.
- All Japan Students Photographers Association. Hiroshima Hiroshima hírou-shima. Tokyo: Zen-Nihon Gakusei Shashin renmei, 1972.
- Ken Domon. Living Hiroshima. Tokyo: Tsukiji Shokan Co., Ltd., 1978.
- Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki. Pika-Don. Translated by Ken’ichi Matsumura. Tokyo: Roba-no-Mimi, October 1979.
- Renzo Kinoshita and Sayoko Kinoshita. Pica-Don. Tokyo: Dynamic Sellers Publishing, 1979.
- Miyoko Matsubara (Japanese, 1932-2018). Laurence Wiig, translator. Little Boy: An Atomic Bomb Survivor Speaks to America. Second rough draft. Unpublished typescript, August 1984.
- Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki. The Hiroshima Panels. Tokyo: Komine Shoten, 1990.
- Kikuji Kawanda. The Map. Tucson, AZ & Tokyo: Nazraeli Press & Getsuyosha Ltd., 2005. First Edition Thus Copy 196/500.
- Isiuchi Miyako (Japanese b. 1947). Hiroshima: Strings of Time. Hiroshima: Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008.
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