At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, the first bomb exploded over Hiroshima killing, by some estimates, 140,000 people, and destroying 90 percent of the city. But near its hypocenter only one building was left standing.
Seventy years later, the Genbaku Dome — now known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial — is part of a very different city that’s home to 1.2 million residents and filled with skyscrapers, apartment buildings and streetcars.
Armed with archival photographs, Reuters photographer Issei Kato revisited some of the same locations destroyed 70 years ago in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. (Shigeo Hayashi/Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/Reuters; Issei Kato/Reuters)
Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki. (Shigeo Hayashi/Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum/Reuters; Issei Kato/Reuters)
The Shiroyama National School in Nagasaki. (Shigeo Hayashi/Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum; Issei Kato/Reuters)
Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. (Masami Oki/Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum; Issei Kato/Reuters)
More about Hiroshima 70 years later:
Nick Kirkpatrick is a digital photo editor at The Washington Post. Follow him on Instagram or on Twitter.
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