Hiroshima

The message of this fairly well made documentary is its gift. No finger pointing. No demanding of apologies. No assignment of blame. Just a dramatic portrayal of events. Very dramatic. Some of the scenes, personal and intimate scenes, are very painful to watch but are there to illustrate a horror which is hard to imagine otherwise. I came away with the feeling that dropping the atomic bombs was a terrible thing, so terrible it is beyond comprehension, but, still, a necessary thing. However, this documentary is all about the sadness, the almost unbearable sadness, of it all. If you're trying to gain a better understanding of these events, I highly recommend this.

There was a comment in this film about the compassion and the Japanese. I realize that many people died in the two blasts and that many died subsequently. In all of my readings I have never seen any instance of Japanese compassion. It is though the nation was born without it. I have viewed the Japanese people of that time as automatons to their Emporer, willing to die but not live. I am slightly older than the use of these two bombs and nothing will convince me that millions of Japanese would have been enlisted to fight any invasion, including school girls. The leaders of Japan seemed to view their citizens as fodder. We can imagine the reaction around the world if Truman had not used these bombs. He would have been castigated. I thought the puny power of these bombs compared to today's H-bombs should have been mentioned. Now the circle of death reaches out over 20 miles.

This "documentary" follows the American propaganda to the letter. About how the Americans were apparently wringing their hands in anxiety over whether to drop the bomb or not, how they implored Japan to surrender, how the bomb would be an alternative to an invasion of Japan which would spare up to a million lives.

Not a mention about how Japan actually were discussing surrender, which American cryptographers had picked up. Not a mention of Ellis Zacharias who managed to muddle the American message to the point that neither the Japanese nor the American media knew which was the official US line.

The tired old propaganda about how the bomb saved lives in the end, is of course nonsense. First of all, the calculated number of casualties resulting from an invasion of Japan magically rose from an estimated 31 000 by Marshall on 18 June 1945, to 500 000 battle casualties after the bomb was dropped. Nowadays people even like to use figures in the millions. A more blatant attempt to try and justify the mass murder of a hundred thousand with a single bomb could hardly be conjured up. Furthermore, the bomb and an invasion were not mutually exclusive. Truman never presented the bomb as an alternative to invasion until after the war.

Carefully toeing the American propaganda line, the "documentary" makes no mention of how the final discussions in the Japanese leadership went before finally surrendering. In short, they scarcely mentioned the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The main concern of the Japanese leadership was the invasion of Manchuria by the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Kwantung army. But God forbid that the Soviet Union should receive any credit in World War 2.

And it's quite unsettling to listen to these old men casually describing and justifying their mass murder.

If you really want to learn anything about the process of the development of the nuclear program, the decision to drop the bombs, and the aftermath, give this garbage a pass and read "Hiroshima Nagasaki" by Paul Ham instead. If you're interested in eyewitness accounts of the immediate aftermath, read "Hiroshima" by John Hersey.

"Hiroshima" is in my opinion one of the best documentaries of all time. It is really sad movie to watch, but at the same time I think that is necessary, to remind us of the destruction power of nuclear or atomic bombs, and the reason to never use them again. The throwing of the bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was truly a crime against the humanity. It was a event that have changed world history forever. We will never forget all the destruction caused by the bombs in these cities. Now in 2022, At the middle of the russo-ukrainian war and the tension between North and South Korea, all that I want is that something like this would never happen again. All that I want, and I think that most of the people of the whole world want it too, is the world peace. No bombs, no destruction, no more death, no more killing ourselves, no more wars. Just peace.

I thought this was a very well done docudrama about the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. It mixed historical footage, survivor interviews and dramatic re-enactments to bring the story to light. It left out almost all of the moralistic arguments used to frame today's arguments and just told the story of what happened, mostly through the eyes of the people involved (of which there are precious few left). Whether you think the decision to drop the bombs was right or wrong, this is an excellent movie to help understand the event. If you don't know much about the circumstances surrounding the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima, this should be one of the first sources you visit to add to your knowledge base.