| Original caption: “The patient’s skin is burned in a pattern corresponding to the dark portions of a kimono worn at the time of the explosion.” Photograph of S. Ushio (1923 – circa 1945) from the Kakomachi Ward, Hiroshima. The burn pattern is from a Yukata, a common, casual, inexpensive summertime cotton kimono. The heat absorbed black or dark-colored portions of her kimono pattern, that were burned into her skin. The average 22-year-old Hiroshima woman in 1945 was married, so she was likely a housewife, as Japanese social structure in 1945 expected women to remain at home to raise children. The photo was taken at Ujina Branch of the Hiroshima 1st Army Hospital. Gonichi Kimura (1905 – 1973), a staff photographer for the Imperial Japanese Army’s Marine Training Division, took Ushio’s photo at the Ujina Military Hospital, 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) from the hypocenter, equally distant from Kakomachi Ward. Since Kakomachi is approximately 1,400 yards (1,300 meters) from the hypocenter, if she was home, she would’ve likely died. The photo is dated August 15, 1945, but was likely taken weeks later. It was shot on color film, but color film was not available in Japan at the time. American researchers brought color film and arrived in Hiroshima on September 9, 1945. The Chugoku Shimbun claims S. Ushio died in September 1945. Her body was transferred from Hiroshima to Ninoshima, “The place of the sleeping dead,” an emergency field hospital that treated tens of thousands of people and where many thousands died. In the mass creations and burials on this island in the Seto Inland Sea, records were not adequately kept. Chugoku Shimbun believes S. Ushio’s ashes reside in the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound near the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Many thousands of remains in the vault are unidentified. Kimura became a member of the photography team of the Army Marine Training Division, located in Hiroshima’s Ujina-machi area (present-day Minami Ward), after working in the photography department of the Chugoku Shimbun. After experiencing the atomic bombing on the grounds of the training division, he took from a distance photographs of the mushroom cloud and the city center as it became enveloped in smoke. From late August to early September 1945, with a medical survey team led by Tokyo Imperial University Professor Masao Tsuzuki, Kimura photographed atomic bomb survivors suffering greatly from acute effects of radiation due to the atomic bombing, including spotting caused by subcutaneous bleeding and hair loss. He lost his wife in the atomic bombing. After the war, he managed a souvenir shop in Hiroshima. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1700.jpg |
| Image Size | 696.70 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2610 x 2880 |
| Photographer | Gonichi Kimura |
| Photographer Title | Imperial Japanese Army Marine Training Division |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | September 30, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | Hiroshima |
| State or Province | Hiroshima |
| Country | Japan |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-77-MDH-655B |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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