Motomachi Apartments 基町アパート

Hiroshima City 1978

ÔTAKA Masato

The Municipal Motomachi High-rise Apartments is a large residential complex in Motomachi. It was built with the aim of eliminating the poor residential neighbourhood of Motomachi, where originally only the residents who had lived in the area before the atomic bomb was dropped were supposed to live. However, due to displacement during the redevelopment of other areas, more and more people moved into the Motomachi area – by 1960, 900 illegal buildings had been erected in this area. This gave rise to the “Motomachi Bad Housing Area”, also known as the “A-bomb slum”. By 1974, the last war-damaged and repatriated houses had disappeared, by 1978 the redevelopment of Motomachi was completed.