Film Shows 1935 Hiroshima

Above, the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall before the bomb. 

A film shot in 1935, showing the city of Hiroshima before it was destroyed in August 1945 by the atomic bomb, has been digitalized and posted online.

The Japan Times reported:

HIROSHIMA – The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum released online Wednesday digitally processed 16 mm film footage that shows the central area of Hiroshima about 10 years before the city was devastated by the U.S. atomic bombing. 

The original film is the only footage owned by the museum depicting the area before World War II. 

The footage is “valuable data that clearly shows how Hiroshima looked before being atom-bombed,” said a staff member at the museum. In the closing days of the war, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, on Aug. 6, 1945, and another on the city of Nagasaki three days later.

The film briefly shows the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall before it became the ruin known today as the Atomic Bomb Dome.

Above, the Atomic Bomb Dome today from a similar vantage point. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

To see the film, go here.