Hiroshima Atomic Bombing Remembered with Google Earth

Dur­ing the final days of World War II, the Unit­ed States dropped dev­as­tat­ing atom­ic bombs on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. More than 65 years lat­er, Hide­nori Watanave, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of Tokyo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty, has cre­at­ed a dig­i­tal archive to pre­serve the mem­o­ry of the Hiroshi­ma bomb­ing. A com­ple­ment to the Nagasa­ki archive launched in 2010, the Hiroshi­ma Archive lay­ers his­tor­i­cal resources into Google Earth, giv­ing users the chance to explore a panoram­ic view of Hiroshi­ma, sur­vivor accounts, aer­i­al pho­tos, 3D topo­graph­i­cal data, and build­ing mod­els.

The doc­u­ments are all writ­ten in Japan­ese, which cre­ates some­thing of a lan­guage bar­ri­er for many read­ers. But a tour through the archive will tell you some­thing impor­tant — some­thing impor­tant about the Hiroshi­ma bomb­ing and how we’re memo­ri­al­iz­ing the past in our new dig­i­tal age.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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