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Recreating Nagasaki

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Akiko Fujita reports that students at the University of Nagasaki are attempting to create a 3D digital image of the Japanese city BEFORE a US atomic bomb destroyed it during World War II. Very few photos remain of the pre-bomb neighborhoods, so the students are also relying on survivor memories.

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MARCO WERMAN: Students at the University of Nagasaki are attempting to recreate a community that a nuclear weapon destroyed. The Urakami neighborhood in Nagasaki was ground zero for the second atomic bomb the US dropped on Japan in World War II. That attack killed an estimated 39,000 people and it destroyed most pictures of life in Urakami before the war. The students are recreating prewar Urakami with the help of memories and 3D technology. Akiko Fujita sent us this report from Nagasaki.

BYONDOK JUN: [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

AKIKO FUJITA: Byondok Jun sits in an empty computer lab with a dozen photos in hand. Some are blurry, other faded. The 48-year-old University of Nagasaki professor inspects each one in search of clues to the past.

JUN: [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

FUJITA: He points to an aerial shot of Nagasaki to show where the University Hospital was. That tiny box to the right, he says, is the medical school.

An American war plane snapped that picture in August 1945, two days before the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city. The US released the photo a few years ago. The black and white image gave Jun the first glimpse into life here before the nuclear attack.

JUN: [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

FUJITA: The more I stared at the picture I saw trees, buildings, heard laughter from people on the ground, he says.

The image inspired Jun to recreate a 3D aerial image of the neighborhood.

[SOUND CLIP OF STUDENTS SPEAKING ABOUT PHOTO]

Students Yurika Uchijima and Kanouka Maeda asked to take the project a step further for a graduate thesis. The students wanted to include the street corners, homes, and churches – bring back the entire neighborhood digitally.

KANOUKA MAEDA; [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

FUJITA: Maeda says she’d heard stories about Urakami through her Peace Studies class and her grandmother, an atomic bomb survivor. Maeda immediately connected with the project.

There weren’t many photos that survived the Nagasaki bombing so the students struggled to visualize the neighborhood. They walked down Urakami streets, knocked on every door in search of atomic bomb survivors and their memories of happier days. That search led them to Yoshitoshi Fukahori, a survivor who had spent 30 years collecting pictures of Nagasaki for the city’s Foundation for Peace.

YOSHITOSHI FUKAHORI: [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

FUJITA: Fukahori was a teenage student in 1945. He says Urakami was a community that opened its doors to everybody. The neighborhood operated like one big family and shared in each others joy.

FUKAHORI: [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

FUJITA: He remembers the day his sister sang on the radio. Everybody crammed into the local barber shop to hear her voice. Fukahori wasn’t home the day of the bombing but his sister was. He found her dead with his uncle and aunt when he returned home a few days later.

The emotional stories have turned an academic project into a personal one. The students spend hours comparing notes on the color of the brick at Fukahori’s old church. They mull over the location of a post office sign where four women gathered for a photo. So far they’ve digitally recreated a tenth of Urakami’s buildings but they say there are limits to 3D.

YURIKA UCHIJIMA: [SPEAKING JAPANESE]

FUJITA: Yurika Uchijima says she wanted to bring back the joy the survivors felt in these homes but a computer screen doesn’t convey emotions. It’s hard to get a real sense of Urakami without hearing the stories. Uchijima and Kanouko hope to finish the map by December when they graduate. As for the map’s future use, Professor Jun sees it as a tool for peace – one that creates a window into another lifetime that a nuclear weapon wiped away. For The World I’m Akiko Fujita in Nagasaki, Japan.

WERMAN: If you’d like to see some of the 3D recreations of Nagasaki we’ve got a short video on our website. Just visit The World dot org.

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