Cherry blossoms, river walks and afternoon errands: Extremely rare video footage from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum paints a blissful picture in Hiroshima—approximately 10 years before the city was demolished by an atomic bomb during World War II.
An estimated 146,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and another 80,000 died in Nagasaki after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on the cities days apart in August of 1945. Residents of both cities who were not killed during the initial blast suffered radiation sickness and injuries related to the nuclear weapon for years after the fact.
The video footage gives a rare glimpse of what the daily routine was like in those cities before all the devastation.
The 16mm film footage cost nearly $8,000 dollars to digitize, Mashable reports, and is reportedly the only footage owned by the museum that depicts the area before the bombing.
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