PBS

New footage released by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum depicts quintessential life in Japan about 10 years prior to the country’s destruction after the U.S. atomic bombing.

The museum released the 4K resolution film on July 5. The silent 16mm footage shows a bustling Hiroshima: families stroll the city streets and people row boats on the river.

“The film brings back memories of the days when I rowed boats and went fishing on the Motoyasugawa river,” Tokuso Hamai, 82, told the Japan-based newspaper, The Asahi Shimbun.

Genjiro Kawasaki, a local Hiroshima resident, captured the footage in the 1930s, and in 1963, donated the video to the museum. Imagica West Corp., a visual production company, helped digitally replicate the film. The film is believed to have been shot between April 4 and 5 in 1935.

Why it’s important

Kawasaki’s footage offers a rare glimpse into Hiroshima before it was devastated by the nuclear attack, which occurred on August 6, 1945. During World War II, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb, killing nearly 150,000 people in Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, a second atomic bomb killed more than 70,000 in Japan’s northwestern city, Nagasaki.

Museum staff have made plans to request the public’s help in gathering materials in order to further depict life before the atomic bomb.