was a Japanese photographer best known for extensively photographing

Nagasaki , officially , is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. Founded by the Portuguese, the port of Portuguese_Nagasaki, Nagasaki became the sole Nanban trade, port used for tr ...

the day after it was bombed.

Biography

Yamahata was born in

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

on 6 August 1917; his father, Shōgyoku Yamahata (, later to become known as a photographer) had a job there related to photography.Hirakata and the ''Biographic Dictionary'' state that Yamahata's original given name was , but do not specify its reading. A likely reading is "Keiichi". He went to Tokyo in 1925 and eventually started at

Hosei University formerly known as Tokyo University of Law (東京法学社, Tokyo Hogakusha) is a top research university in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Hosei University and four other private universities in Tokyo are collectively known as "MARCH (Japanese univers ...

(Tokyo) but dropped out in 1936 to work in G. T. Sun (, ''Jīchīsan Shōkai,'' aka Graphic Times Sun), a photographic company run by his father. (He would become its president in 1947.) From 1940, Yamahata worked as a military photographer in China,

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China), officially known as the Indochinese Union and after 1941 as the Indochinese Federation, was a group of French dependent territories in Southeast Asia from 1887 to 1954. It was initial ...

and

and elsewhere in Asia outside Japan; he returned to Japan in 1942.

Photography of immediate after-effects the Nagasaki atomic bombing

In July 1945 Yamahata was requisitioned for a military journalist and dispatched to a department in Hakata on 1 August. He took up his new post of the department on 6 August, the day of Hiroshima bombing. On 9 August, 1945 it was reported in Japan that US bombers dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki and after it 5 military journalists in the department including Yamahata were commanded to go to Nagasaki to photograph its devastating scenes. On a day after the Nagasaki bombing, Yamahata reached the outskirt of Nagasaki to begin to photograph the devastation. Over a period of about twelve hours he took around a hundred exposures; by late afternoon, he had taken his final photographs near a

first aid First aid is the first and immediate assistance given to any person with a medical emergency, with care provided to preserve life, prevent the condition from worsening, or to promote recovery until medical services arrive. First aid is gener ...

station north of the city. In a single day, he had completed the only extensive photographic record of the immediate aftermath of the

atomic bombing Atomic may refer to: * Of or relating to the atom, the smallest particle of a chemical element that retains its chemical properties * Atomic physics, the study of the atom * Atomic Age, also known as the "Atomic Era" * Atomic scale, distances comp ...

of either

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has b ...

or Nagasaki.

Publication

Yamahata's photographs appeared swiftly in Japan, for example in the August 21 issue of '' Mainichi Shinbun.'' After the GHQ's restrictions on coverage of the effects of the atomic bomb were lifted earlier in 1952, his photographs of Nagasaki appeared in the September 29 issue of ''

Life Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...

.'' The same year, they appeared in the book ''Kiroku-shashin: Genbaku no Nagasaki.'' One which was used in ''Life,'' also appeared in the 1955 exhibition and book " The Family of Man" an exhibition created for

The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of arc ...

Edward Steichen Edward Jean Steichen (; March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter and curator and a pioneer of fashion photography. His gown images for the magazine ''Art et Décoration'' in 1911 were the first modern ...

, which was seen by 9 million visitors worldwide. One of the less graphic, but more affecting images, it depicted a bewildered little boy, clutching a rice ball, with shrapnel cuts to the face. The head-and-torso enlargement was cropped tightly from a negative that had also showed his mother, also with facial wounds, standing behind, against a background of railway tracks.

Illness and death

Yamahata became violently ill in 1965, on his forty-eighth birthday and the twentieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the

duodenum The duodenum is the first section of the small intestine in most vertebrates, including mammals, reptiles, and birds. In mammals, it may be the principal site for iron absorption. The duodenum precedes the jejunum and ileum and is the shortest p ...

. He died of the cancer on 18 April 1966 and was buried at Tama Cemetery, Tokyo.

Preservation and ongoing circulation of Yamahata's Nagasaki images

Restoration work was done on Yamahata's negatives after his death. An exhibition of prints, "Nagasaki Journey", traveled to San Francisco, New York, and Nagasaki in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the bombing. Yamahata's photographs of Nagasaki remain the most complete record of the atomic bombing as seen immediately after the bombing. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' has called his photographs "some of the most powerful images ever made".

Gallery

File:A boy holding a rice ball.jpg, ''A boy holding a rice ball'', which is one of Yamahata's famous photos File:A mother and her child leaving the first-aid station after receiving rations - 1945-08-10 morning.jpg, A mother and her child leaving the first-aid station after receiving rations File:A mother and a child waiting for the turn of treatment - In front of Michino'o station, Nagasaki City - 10 August 1945 - Yamahaya Yōsuke.png, A mother and a child waiting for the turn of treatment in front of Michino'o station, Nagasaki City File:Victims of the atomic bombing to Nagasaki.jpg, Victims of atomic bombing File:A charred body and a woman stunned with shock.png, A charred body and a woman stunned with shock Image:NagasakiSurvivors1945.jpg, Survivors of the atomic bombing Image:UrakamiStationAug1945.jpg, Victims of the atomic bombing Image:Nagasaki - person burned.jpg, Partially incinerated child in Nagasaki

Books of Yamahata's works

* ''Kiroku-shashin: Genbaku no Nagasaki'' (). Daiichi Shuppansha, 1952. * ''Genbaku no Nagasaki'' (). Tokyo: Gakufū Shoin, 1959. * ''Nagasaki Journey: The Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata August 10, 1945.'' San Francisco: Pomegranate, 1995. . * ''Nagasaki yomigaeru genbaku shashin'' (). Tokyo: NHK, 1995. . * ''Yamahata Yōsuke'' (). Nihon no shashinka 23. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1998. .

Notes

References

Sources

* Hirakata (). "Yamahata Yōsuke". ''Nihon shashinka jiten'' () / ''328 Outstanding Japanese Photographers.'' Kyoto: Tankōsha, 2000. . Despite the English-language alternative title, all in Japanese. *''Kaku: Hangenki'' () / ''The Half Life of Awareness: Photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.'' Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 1995. Exhibition catalogue; captions and text in both Japanese and English. Fifteen pages of Yamahata's photographs of Nagasaki; also works by

Ken Domon was a celebrated Japanese photographer known for his work as a photojournalist and as a photographer of Buddhist temples and statuary. Domon, who began his career in the 1930s contributing photo reportages to magazines that supported the increas ...

, Toshio Fukada, Kikujirō Fukushima, Shigeo Hayashi, Kenji Ishiguro, Shunkichi Kikuchi, Mitsugi Kishida, Eiichi Matsumoto, Yoshito Matsushige, Shōmei Tōmatsu, and Hiromi Tsuchida. Text and captions in both Japanese and English. * ''Nihon no shashinka'' () / ''Biographic Dictionary of Japanese Photography.'' Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 2005. . Despite the English-language alternative title, all in Japanese.

External links

Photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
presented by the San Francisco Exploratorium {{DEFAULTSORT:Yamahata, Yosuke 1917 births 1966 deaths Japanese photographers Hibakusha Hosei University alumni Japanese people of World War II Burials at Tama Cemetery Documentary photographers Singaporean photographers People from Singapore