Hiroshima Files

[David Morris]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/05/22/magazine/22look-hiroshima.html

Two months after an atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945,
the United States Strategic Bombing Survey commissioned by President
Harry S. Truman began to study the extensive structural damage done to
the city, from the reinforced-concrete buildings at its center to the
traditional wooden ones on its outskirts. Truman’s goal was to collect
information that would help U.S. architects and civil engineers design
structures able to withstand a nuclear attack. The secretive report
included 700 images of Hiroshima. Robert L. Corsbie, executive officer
of the Physical Damage Division, which conducted the survey, kept the
prints until his death, in 1967; their odyssey afterward included
being rescued by a neighbor from the curb after being put out with the
trash, eventually ending up at the International Center of Photography
in New York in 2006. On May 20, the center is opening a three-month
exhibition of the work. The government’s caption to slide No. 4
(above) refers to ‘‘air zero,’’ the site of the blast, and says,
‘‘Shows partly burned coat of boy who was in open near City Hall
(Building 28) 3,800 feet from AZ.’’