Around Mazda Stadium (Former Hiroshima East Freight Yard) about 60 years ago and today

History of Around Mazda Stadium (Former Hiroshima East Freight Yard)

There is a band where dozens of tracks lie side by side, and on its southern edge a single ballpark without a roof sits. They are the group of freight tracks continuing east of Hiroshima Station and Mazda Stadium, the home ground of the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. On the delta made of sediment carried by the Ota River, this area is a long, narrow strip of low flat land left between rivers. The work of sorting freight needs flat land of uniform length. Places in a city where many straight lines hundreds of meters long without a bend can be laid side by side are not common. This area was used as a freight yard because there was a band of land extending diagonally along the river just east of Hiroshima Station. As you advance the aerial photographs toward the older side, not a single blade of turf appears where the ballpark is; instead, bundles of tracks fill the frame diagonally.

Tracks opening like a fan

The 1945-50 aerial photograph has extreme contrast between white and black: the roads come out white, and the rows of houses sink into fine gray grains. The northeast corner of the frame is dark mountains, and from there the city is packed as if it were spilling down toward the southwest. A little above the center there is a place where the tracks open in the shape of a fan. It is the yard of Hiroshima Station. From there, bundles of tracks run east and southeast as a dark band and pass off to the lower right of the frame. Inside the band, white, long, narrow things line up diagonally in many rows, looking like lines of stopped railcars. On the southeast side of the band, several large white rectangular roofs line up diagonally. They are probably transit sheds or warehouses for transferring cargo. The place that becomes the ballpark is at the southern edge of this band.

When you advance to 1961-69, the whole frame sinks dark and the grain becomes even coarser. Even so, the bundle of tracks extending east from the station yard is thick and continues as a dark band to the right edge of the frame. West of the yard, one structure that looks white like the letter B catches the eye. A wide, bright, flat surface lies on the north side, and a surface with no buildings that seems to be under land preparation remains in the city. If you follow the southern edge of the bundle of tracks with your eye, you find one long, narrow roof with fine stripes, and to its southeast large white roofs divided into a grid are gathered. You can read that equipment for cargo handling had lined up along this edge by this era.

Transit sheds and rows of railcars

Color enters the photographs with the 1974-78 one. However, the color cast varies from surface to surface, with the upper part leaning green and the middle brown. The divisions between surfaces cut off in straight lines in the upper part and the lower left. The river appears dark green, with many straight bridges crossing it. The bundle of tracks is bright whitish gray in this era, which if anything makes it easier to see the many lines running side by side. If you zoom in, dozens of lines run in parallel in the upper half, below them is a corner of long, narrow roofs with vertical stripes, farther south white rectangular roofs line up diagonally, and in the lower right a large white roof with a grid pattern waits. Laying lines, putting up roofs, moving cargo: those three layers lined up in order from north to south.

In 1979-83 the colors become dense and even, and the seams disappear too. The bundle of tracks is reddish brown and takes up nearly a third of the frame diagonally. The shape of the transit sheds becomes clearest in this era. Toward the west of the yard, about three long, narrow buildings holding dark stripes line up diagonally in the same direction as the tracks. Bright grayish-white paving lies around the buildings, with small dots that look like cars scattered about. Toward the south, two or more large roofs shining white are gathered, and another bright roof continues to their east. This scene, with long, narrow transit sheds lined up diagonally, is the face of the yard during its working years.

The peak of the rust-colored band

The last of the old aerial photographs is 1987-90, the sharpest of the five eras. The bundle of tracks has grown wider, and at the top edge another thick band overlaps diagonally. It looks like a structure passing at a high position, but you cannot tell what it is from the photograph alone. Inside the bundle, chains of white rectangles appear here and there, and lines of stopped railcars can be read. The transit sheds have increased in number, and a striped pattern of long, narrow roofs and tracks alternating diagonally continues from the center of the frame to the lower right. On the right, two or three large bright roofs are gathered. It is in this era that the cargo-handling equipment looks most densely packed.

The old photographs break off here. The next photograph you can see is the latest one, and the change that happened in between falls into the gap between the eras. The southern edge of the yard was cleared, and there the ballpark opened in 2009. The home ground of the Hiroshima Toyo Carp moved from the ballpark that was in the city center to the eastern edge, within walking distance of Hiroshima Station. Under a naming rights deal it is called Mazda Stadium.

Between the turf and the tracks

In the latest aerial photograph, the green turf swells in a round shape, and inside it the brown soil of the infield opens in a fan shape. The stands are an open bowl without a roof, and the outer ring differs in thickness between left and right. The west side is thick and the east side thin. A wide paved surface lies north of the ballpark, and a sharply curving road wraps around it. A group of buildings with white roofs and bright rectangular surfaces continues to the southeast. On the west side, large white box-shaped buildings line up, and at the southwest corner a round intersection can be seen. If you look only around the ballpark, it is no different from a redeveloped corner in front of a station.

But if you move your eye to the northeast, the rust-colored bundle of tracks still fills the upper right of the frame diagonally. Dozens of lines lie side by side, and lines of white railcars and reddish railcars appear on them. The freight tracks still remain today. The ballpark did not use the whole of the former site; it stands on borrowed ground along the southern edge of the long, narrow yard. The green of the turf and the rust color of the tracks touch side by side within one photograph. When you hear "former site", land where everything has been replaced by something else probably comes to mind. This place is not like that.

The height of the land in this area is almost flat. The west is 2.9 m and the east 1.5 m, a difference of only 1.4 m. The center and the north are both 2 m, and the south is 2.3 m. On the delta, the elevation figures do not tell of any relief, so where rain and river water go can only be seen in other materials. The official hazard map published by the City of Hiroshima suits that purpose.

The observation point for official land prices (Chika Koji) is placed about 520 m from here, in the residential area of Kaminobori-cho. The value per square meter is 519,000 yen in 2013, 800,000 yen in 2019 and 1,080,000 yen in the 2026 publication. From 2013 to the 2026 publication there was no year in which it turned down, and the start and the end are 561,000 yen apart. However, the values can be traced only from four years after the ballpark opened, and no values remain from the time when there was only the yard.