Steeling Oneself
Yoshito Matsushige
Yoshito Matsushige joined Geibinichinichi Newspaper Corporation in 1941. After the company was merged with the Chugoku Shimbun Company, he was assigned to the photography department. After 1944, he also worked as a press report group member at Chugoku Regional Military Headquarters.
Yoshito Matsushige (then, 32) experienced the atomic bombing in his home in Midori-machi. Immediately after the bombing, he tried to enter the city to go to his office at the Chugoku Shimbun Company. As the flames blocked his way, he returned to Miyuki Bridge. As a press photographer, he tried to take photos of the terrible state of Miyuki Bridge, but faced with the hellish scenes in front of him, he could not make himself press the shutter. After struggling in that spot for over thirty minutes, he finally steeled himself and pressed the shutter, but later worried that the dead and injured victims might have thought he was merciless, because he was taking photos instead of trying to help them. The five photos that Matsushige took on August 6 are testimonies to the event.
After his retirement from the Chugoku Shimbun Company in 1969, he started talking about his A-bomb experience as a witness. In 1978, together with others from Hiroshima who took photographs of the atomic bombing, and with the families of A-bomb photographers who had passed away, he formed the Association of Photographers of the Atomic (Bomb) Destruction of Hiroshima. He dedicated much of his life to the preservation and organization of A-bomb photos. He died in 2005.
Courtesy of Yoshito Matsushige