TOKYO (AP) – When Tokuso Hamai saw the colored edition of an old black-and-white photo of a picnic held under the cherry blossoms sometime before World War II, memories of the circle of relatives were forgotten, most of whom died in the atmosphere. bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, came here in droves.
“In the colored photos, other people come to life,” said Hamai, now 86. “I played near (the picnic place) and infrequently did unpleasant things and my father scolded me.”
The strength of a photo colored to revive lost memories tells Anju Niwata, a student who gave Hamai the color photo as a gift 3 years ago.
The 75th anniversary of the end of World War II is Saturday and Niwata, now 18, said he hoped to draw attention to his assignment with a professor at the University of Tokyo to thoroughly color images of synthetic intelligence and his own studies to extract them. memories for the aging generation that experienced the war.
“Seeing Niwata share the colored photographs with Hamai, then seeing him not forget his old memories one after the other, gave the impression that the ice around his frozen memories was melting,” said Hidenori Watanave, the instructor who learned monochrome of color in Niwata. AI photographs.
Niwata and Watanave call their photo coloring task “Reset Memories” and last month they published an e-book with colored versions of some 350 monochrome photographs taken before and after the war.
Watanave and Niwata use 3 other types of AI photo coloring software. AI is useful for identifying the exact colors of herbal things, such as the sea, sky and human skin, but it cannot, as it should be, coloring artificial elements such as roofs and clothing, Watanave said.
Therefore, Niwata and Watanave thoroughly end AI-colored images by hand to download more accurate colors based on the memories of photo homeowners and expert advice. They also examine old documents and files that show how colors look.
Some images take a few months to complete.
For Watanave, Twitter has a difficult platform to continue the coloring project.
When he posted a photo of the cloud in the form of a Hiroshima atomic bomb fungus that Al software had colored white, a director advised it to be more orange.
Watanave reviewed the testimonies of those who saw the fungus and also searched for the parts of the atomic bomb to see if it could only give an orange color.
After confirming that it is possible, Watanave added orange to the image.
Although color accuracy is vital, Niwata and Watanave stated that the most important thing is that the colored images matched the memories of the photo owners.
However, time is running out; the average age of atomic bomb survivors is a few years.
There are moments of amazement when other older people see the images revitalized.
When Niwata showed the colored edition of a photograph of the circle of relatives to a survivor of the war with dementia, for example, she remembered the type of flowers in the photo; a few weeks later he couldn’t speak.
Niwata said the publication of the e-book on coloring the coronavirus outbreak had made him think about the pandemic’s link to the war.
“Our daily life was stolen through the coronavirus in an instant, which I think looks like what happened during the war. That’s why I feel it’s now an opportunity for other people to believe (the life of war) as their own experience,” he said.
Watanave hopes that the use of new technologies will make young Japanese people feel more attached to those who lived through the war.
“People remember the memories of war. We want to revitalize those old memories using the latest explicitation approach and handing it to the hearts of many people,” he said. “As we celebrate the 80th or 85th anniversary, we will have to find a new way to express (memories of war).”