shashasha

A reprint of Kikujiro Fukushima’s (1921-2015) seminal photobook, originally released in 1961

In his series Big Sudden Flash (Pikadon), Fukushima documented victims of the atomic bomb explosion in Hiroshima and the damage done to their bodies by the resulting radiation poisoning. The book’s central figure is Sugimatsu Nakamura, who had only barely survived the initial blast of the Hiroshima bomb, and his family.

“In 1949, however, Mr Nakamura became so weak that he could no longer go out fishing. Although his wife worked desperately, they sometimes couldn’t buy sufficient food.
Such misery was not limited to Mr. Nakamura alone. More than 100,000 who escaped the city of death and somehow managed to live also experienced this kind of phenomenon: […] vicious anaemia, unusually rapid increase of erythrocytes and succen occurrence of cancer.
But what pushed the people to the bottom of fear were rumours that a brainless child had been born, or that one-eyed babies had been born.”