The 50th anniversary of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs has elicited a bitter harvest of books. No matter how much you know intellectually about the effects of the bombs, nothing is more powerful than the actual images of destruction. Yosuke Yamahata began to photograph Nagasaki at dawn on 10 August, 1945, under orders from the Japanese military to document the devastation. In Nagasaki Journey (Pomegranate Europe, £14.99 pbk, ISBN 0 87654 360 3), his photographs are published again, for the first time in 40 years, with an accompanying essay and brief notes on each image. Words would fail anyone trying to describe the horrors he saw. The photographs are on exhibition simultaneously in Nagasaki and San Francisco.
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