The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is showing newly obtained color footage filmed shortly after the U.S. atomic bombing in August 1945.
The footage shows Hiroshima from the ground and air between around October 1945 and February 1946, and on the occasion of a visit by Emperor Hirohito, known posthumously as Emperor Showa, in December 1947.
The video comes from five films produced by British military personnel and journalists, and has been edited into a roughly six-minute segment that can be seen at the museum through late July. The exhibition began last Saturday.
Curators from the museum collected the footage last year from the Imperial War Museum in London. Most of it was shot on 16 mm film.
"I'm sure that the footage will enable visitors to really feel the sight of a 'reddish brown city,' the words which have often been used to describe Hiroshima at that time," said Hironobu Ochiba, a curator at the museum.
Located in Peace Memorial Park near ground zero in central Hiroshima, the museum is one of the city's most popular tourist destinations, along with the Atomic Bomb Dome — the skeletal remains of the only major building left standing after the bombing.
The museum's main building reopened last April after a two-year renovation, with some additional photos and belongings of victims put on display.