Nagasaki Day: 9th August

BNPS.co.uk (01202 558833) Pic: RRAuctions/BNPS Haunting photographs taken the day after Nagasaki was hit with an atomic bomb have emerged 70 years after being confiscated by American forces. The collection of poignant images taken by Yosuke Yamahata, a Japanese military photographer, show the flattened landscape, mass death and desperate plight of survivors immediately following the nuclear blast. Yamahata was tasked with documenting the destruction for propaganda purposes and arrived at the scene just 12 hours later. His photographs, which became iconic after featuring in a 1952 edition of Life Magazine, are considered the most complete record of the attack's aftermath. However some were confiscated by an unidentified US military policeman in the months that followed, never to be seen again until now. The lot is being sold by RR Auction in the USA on Sunday, September 25.