Les enfants d'Hiroshima

Takako Ishikawa (Nobuko Otowa), a young kindergarten teacher, reconnects with pupils and friends in Hiroshima four years after the city was demolished by an atomic bomb*. The film is a moving commentary of the consequences of nuclear weapons, especially on children, and wisely that is where the emphasis lies - not on the moral and strategic debates pertaining to their use in 1945. There is a brief recreation of the detonation of the bomb, with searing images of people and animals dying, but most of the film is about the people Ishikawa visits as she wanders through the slowly rebuilding city, such as an scarred and blind beggar who was a former employee of her father, a former pupil dying of radiation-induced illness, a young woman crippled in the explosion, and another young woman sterilized by ionizing radiation. Directed by Kaneto Shindo (who would later direct the creepy 'Onibaba' (1964)) with music by Akira Ifukube (of 'Gojira' (1954) fame), the film is touching and tragic. Otowa is excellent as the sweet, soft-spoken young teacher who serves to connect the stories. 'Children of Hiroshima' was the first of two 'anti-war' films sponsored by The Japan Teachers Union. Apparently not satisfied with the product, the union commissioned the second film, simply entitled 'Hiroshima' (1953) and directed by Hideo Sekigawa, which is much more epic, with many scenes of crowds of badly burned survivors stumbling through devastated streets to the river and the final shots of tens of thousands of people congregating in The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Shindo's film is much more low-key and personal, as the camera follows the young teacher as she vicariously experiences the suffering of the survivors. Both are excellent 'docu-dramas' but I found Shindo's film to be more affecting, perhaps because the interactions between Ishikawa and the piteous survivors were so well done. Like most films intended to deliver a message, 'Children of Hiroshima' is not subtle, but it is beautifully made, memorable, and well worth watching. Perhaps films like this contributed to the fact that, despite their proliferation, nuclear weapons have never again been used in a military conflict. *Comments pertain to the English-subtitled version shown on TCM in 2020 (the 75th anniversary of the bombing).

It's been six years since teacher "Takako Ishiwaka" (Nobuko Otowa) lost her parents in the Hiroshima blast and she is now planning on returning to the city to visit friends and to remember her family. On arrival, she stays with "Natsue Morikawa" (Miwa Saitô) who has been rendered infertile by the toxic after-effects of the explosion. This is where this emotionally heart-rending story starts. She explores what's left of the city only to discover that in many areas, a remarkable regeneration has occurred. In others, though, people are living an hand-to-mouth existence and that includes her father's former colleague "Iwakichi" (Osamu Takizawa) who is all but blind and living amongst the ruins whilst his grandchild lives in a nearby orphanage. She is informed that a few of her own fellow school pupils have also survived and so visits them - providing director Kaneto Shindô with an opportunity to present us with three different examples of post-war life and of the resignation, stoicism and maybe even slight optimism of those starting to rebuild - whilst they all turn nervously to the sky when they hear an aircraft overhead. Accompanied by some flashbacks to happier times, this tells a touching story of people whose lives, and in many cases beliefs, have been utterly destroyed. Their infrastructure is gone - physically and psychologically, yet she epitomises a decency and the imagery cannot help but engender a sense of pity from anyone watching. No, it doesn't put this into any form of context with the abhorrent behaviour of the troops who fought in their name elsewhere, so no real attempt is made to politicise the situation. It's more a series of personal tales that do quite succinctly bring home the true horrors of the original weapon of mass destruction and of human resilience.

Kaneto Shindo's movie is without any doubt one of the best ever made. It deals head-on with one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of mankind: the dropping for pure geopolitical reasons of a nuclear bomb on a city thereby killing thousands of innocents citizens in the twinkling of an eye and wreaking havoc for centuries to come on a country (and also very slightly on the whole living world) because the human genetic basic material has been damaged.

Kaneto Shindo's movie shows preeminently that the fate of the world and the human species depends solely on the responsible or irresponsible behavior of every single person on earth. In this movie, a teacher is looking for survivors among the children of her kindergarten class. There are only three. On her own initiative, she tries to secure a more hopeful future for one of those.

This impeccably played movie (also by the children) is simply unforgettable. A must see. For a geopolitical interpretation of the dropping of the atomic bomb I highly recommend the book 'The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb' by Gar Alperovitz.

Nobuko Otowa lives on a small, beautiful island in the house of her uncle, but she grew up in Hiroshima and taught kindergarten there. She returns to her home town to lay flowers on the graves of her parents in the blasted cemetery and see the children she taught. She encounters Osamu Takizawa. Once he was her father's employee. Now, scarred and blinded by the A-Bomb, he ekes out a living, caring only about his parentless grandson.

Confronted with a movie about the consequences of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, my urge is to write about Operation Downfall, its US armed forces casualties estimated at between half a million and a million dead, and two to four million wounded; Japan's Operation Ketsugo, its propaganda campaign of "One Hundred Million Deaths For The Emperor!"; and other factors that made dropping the Bomb not just a political necessity, but an issue of saving lives.

However, Kaneto Shindô's film isn't about the big picture. It's about the tragedy of a small boy who refuses to leave his grandfather. The A-bomb isn't a racist plot by Americans to kill Japanese. It, like war, are monsters that kill people for no reason whatsoever. Blinded old men, fatherless children, women rendered sterile are the lucky ones.

Nominated for the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 1953, which was the highest prize at the time; Children of Hiroshima is Kaneto Shindo's third film and he shows that he is a good director. The first thing that caught my attention was its excellent cinematography and its musical score.

Children of Hiroshima follows a kindergarten teacher Takako, as she returns to Hiroshima after its bombing and meets with her former pupils, six years after teaching them. Only a handful remain. The story does not follow some basic movie template. Children are the theme of the story, rather than indicators of major plot points, we really get to know the people Takako visits, as we learn the stories of their past and the life they live as a result of the bombing. There are many great scenes, one where a plane flies overhead, and although historically, we know that Hiroshima isn't attacked again, we get a feeling of how frightened the residents must feel.

It's amazing how prolific Kaneto Shindo has been, with a total of 43 directing credits, and many more writing credits. He even has a film in post-production right now, at the age of 95.

This movie has been released into the public domain, so it can be legally downloaded off of the web.