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| - A photo supposedly showing the "atomic shadow" of a human and a ladder that was created when the U.S. dropped
In January 2025, the picture resurfaced on X (archived) where one user claimed it showed the imprint of a person killed in the city of Hiroshima when the
Users on X (archived), Facebook (
(Thescaryfact)
The humor website
(Cracked.com)
The earliest example of the claim that the photo showed an "atomic shadow" appeared in an October 2009 blog post (archived) that collected various photos under the title "Atomic Shadows from Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
However, the picture was taken in a different Japanese city, Nagasaki, which the U.S. dropped a second bomb above three days later on Aug. 9, 1945. Therefore we have rated this claim as miscaptioned.
Origin of the Photo
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum confirmed via email that Japanese photographer Eiichi Matsumoto captured the photo in Nagasaki.
The museum shared a webpage belonging to Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun, which owns the image's copyright. That page showed a wider-framed version of the picture (archived) and stated that it was taken "around August 1945" by Eiichi. Its caption read:
Immediately after the Nagasaki bombing, at the fortress headquarters 3.5km [2.2 miles] from the hypocenter, an air defense guard was hit by a flash of the explosion as he climbed down the ladder to the observation post and placed his sword on the paneling. The tar that had been applied to the wooden walls of the warehouse only in the areas hit by the flash has burned and peeled off, leaving only black areas in the shadows. Photo taken by Matsumoto Eiichi, around August 1945.
The Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, also credited Eiichi with capturing the photograph and said it was taken in Nagasaki (archived). Likewise, Getty Images has published two pictures from the Nagasaki site, one of which credits Eiichi.
(Getty Images)
According to a virtual exhibit (archived) at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Matsumoto photographed the aftermath of the bombing in Nagasaki from Aug. 25, to Sep. 15, 1945, alongside an Asahi Shimbun reporter.
The pair then visited Hiroshima between Sept. 18 and Sept. 25, where Eiichi was reportedly "subject to media constraints on showing ghastly images of human bodies."
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