HIROSHIMA — Negatives of some of the earliest photos of the aftermath of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 were recently discovered in Kyodo News' archives, including four pictures that experts said were hitherto unknown.
The 11 negatives were shot by Satsuo Nakata, a reporter in the Osaka bureau of Kyodo's predecessor, the Domei News Agency, when he covered an Imperial Japanese Navy investigation in Hiroshima on Aug. 10 and 11, 1945.
The negatives were found over the past few months by Kiyoshi Numata, chief editor of the photo data center at Kyodo, after an archival research project last year inspired him to see if he could turn up forgotten negatives.