
Mary Had a Little Lamb
- Publisher
- Akaaka Art Publishing
- Year
- 2024
- ISBN
- 978-4-86541-193-5
- Specifications
- Softcover with slipcase
224 x 343 mm
113 pages
Photographs of a hidden postwar history inside the wartime bunkers of Chichijima, in the Ogasawara Islands, 1,000 kilometres south of Tokyo. After thirteen years of trips to the islands for his earlier book The Bonin Islanders, Shinichiro Nagasawa turned to the traces of the American occupation (1945-1968) and to the local knowledge that a nuclear warhead named Mary's Lamb, after the nursery rhyme, was kept on the island. The camera walks into a mountain bunker, past corroded iron doors, to a second chamber painted white, its walls and ceiling covered in copper plate, where a few fittings and a chair remain: an empty room where the weapon that should not have been there is now absent. Between the pages the sea of Ogasawara shines in full light, and a palm tree seen from beyond the bunker closes the book. Winner of the 49th Kimura Ihei Award.