Hiroshima

It seems that CHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA was paid for by the Teacher's Union in Japan; they apparently felt it did not get the message across they wanted, so they commissioned this film. Instead of being seen from the viewpoint of an ex-teacher, the central character is a teacher. Eiji Okada's student suffer from leukemia, general malaise, and other symptoms, some real, some imagined, of having been around when the Bomb went off. There's some discussion talking about how the US looked for any excuse to use the A-Bomb; some concern about a fear that nationalism and a longing for the Old Days would retrigger millitarism and start the whole thing over again; and a harrowing re-enactment of the survivors struggling out out of the wreckage left by the blast.

I'm not sure the Teacher's Union got what they wanted out of this movie; the trouble with directors is they go off and make the movie they want instead of the one you want. In any case, some of the sequences looked like modern 'slow zombie' movies, except they seemed much more real and terrifying. The union did not make a third movie. Perhaps they ran out of money.

Strategy and politics aside, civilians on both sides of WW2 paid a high price. That's a take away from this melodramatic take on the plight of many innocents.

This quotation was offered by Setsuko Thurlow, a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor herself who is a Nobel peace prize recipient and disarmament educator now, who was present at the film's screening in Toronto. She was there to speak of her first-hand experiences regarding the subject-matter and answer audience's questions. She endorsed the film and called it well-researched and correct. The only exception she offered searching her memories of the aftermath of the nuclear explosion was how Hiroshima was eerily quiet after the atomic-bomb was dropped destroying the city and maiming and massacring its citizens. The film has its stunned silent moments, but also features citizens wailing as the soundtrack to suffering. In her talk she remarked that upon being invited to the screening she had not recognized the film at first. This is because the film's title has changed since she first saw it some fifty five years ago. Having soon recognized it she was happy to speak to the audience in addition to endorsing it. She told the audience how she was just over a kilometer away when the atomic bomb dropped and would subsequently watch her sister, niece, nephew and many others either perish away or die outright. She spoke of the American "political oppression" that followed and was critical of the occupying forces that took Japan over. She recalled how dismayed she was upon discovering that the survivors' treatment centres the Americans set up were just research laboratories, with the 'patients' as research subjects, and no treatment was offered for the affected, the burnt, scarred and cancer-ridden. She spoke of the censorship the American forces brought. One Japanese newspaper was shut down for mentioning human suffering. Haiku poetry and correspondence were confiscated and all the while there were 140,000 dead and wounded.

Hiroshima, the movie, is based on a book called Children Of Atomic Bomb, which is a collection of stories by child survivors of the attack. Ninety thousand Hiroshima residents, many of them hibakusha (a term referring to the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), labour unions and a head of university volunteered to help the pro-peace and pacifist movie to be made as no commercial entity and studio would help or touch it. The Japanese teachers' Union financed the film to promote peace. The film is now restored as best as possible following its rediscovery. It depicts the period during World War II prior to and during the atomic bombing and the physical and societal aftermath

The focus of the film is the children, in particular students from a school, one of whom we learn right away has something typical of the post-war period namely leukemia which she, her fellow students and teachers call 'atomic bomb illness.' She confesses to her friends that she doesn't want to die. The students are studious, but also in varying forms of denial, shock and ignorance. They read of the American hypocrisy of howling when Germany uses poison gas, but then itself drops atomic bombs on Japanese cities. Today's Japanese know little about the dates and details of the atomic bombs over their country, but ironically even the children of the 1950s had little factual information about what had happened. Indeed the contemporary conservative Japanese government of 2017 voted against the abolition of nuclear weapons at the United Nations. Back to the children and during the war they knew American 'B' bombers by sight and sound, yet and obviously no one expected the atomic bomb given how the technology was new and never used prior. The aftermath was unbelievable. After thinking for some time the best description of the depiction in the film is none other than 'hell.' What the viewer sees is hell. Man and woman, old and young, civilian and military are in an actual hell and no grainy sixty-year-old footage can distort, diminish or mask it. The film demonstrates the hell other films try to portray: dark, smoky, grim; devastation, rubble, piles of forlorn bodies suffering or dead everywhere with no respite or safety as black rain pours from the sky on the charred and burnt bodies and the living alike. The children are young, but injured or dying at worst and orphaned, sick, suffering, in gangs and separated from family and alone at best. In contrast, we see shots of Japanese harlots hand-in-hand with American soldiers after the war walking around in dresses or sitting and dancing with them at dance clubs. A student succumbs to cancer following her blood poisoning due to radiation in a barebones hospital. It is depressing beyond belief. The film is even-handed - if one could call anything the flip side of civilians incinerating as an atomic bomb drops from the sky fair - and the audience sees Japanese working and mobilizing during the war, practicing and child labour in the name of emperor. The Japanese army dishes out propaganda continuously and even once the atomic bomb is dropped a general is seen demanding a civilian salute him. Yet, no soldier helps the civilian rescue his trapped wife. Then the Japanese officers are seen sitting around plotting to further lie to the citizens and discussing the best way to kill the "rumours" as opposed to helping the citizens or confronting the reality on the ground.

As the world turns some things never change. Both the American war criminals and the Japanese elites - like the emperor - are in another world comfortable with full stomachs and never missing a meal as hell unfolded.

This movie is excellent from start to finish. Its played so authentic, the characters feels so alive. At only 312 reviews at the current time of writing this review its also the most underrated movie ever. There are low budget, unimaginitive and just plain lazy knockoff trash movies that are more popular than this movie and its very sad to think that trash like that gets more attention.

Hiroshima may be a film of 1953 but exposure to it - good heavens, 'devastating', 'exposure' - has been contained for many decades, as if the film itself were radioactive. Apparently there were concerns that it was anti-American, or maybe a bit pro-communist? If it is anything it's anti-war, anti-catastrophy, anti-blind-allegiance, and of course anti-nuclear-weapons. If there's such a thing as an anti-war propaganda film then this is it.

The film's beginning is very powerful. A narrator describes the morning routine of the air crew destined to drop the bomb and obliterate Hiroshima, the sun rising, the pilot's thoughts and fears. Then we see children in a high school classroom. One cries out and the narration, which is actually playing on a record, is stopped by the teacher. Enough about the world changing event, it's time to think of the innocents on the ground. Several years have passed since the bombing but the children are succumbing to leukaemia, to the effects of radiation poisoning. Students in the class are desperate to talk about something that has scarred their world, over which a pall of silence has fallen. They visit a sick girl in hospital. They tell stories of kids who've fallen out of society. They talk about what it means to have the marks, to have witnessed the flash. Then we go back to 1945, to a city full of people living their lives, albeit under the cult of the emperor, military types making them drill and run around, and bow to his imperial majesty. And the minutes go by, and we wait...

Then it happens.

This movie is mostly a dramatisation, with some documentary footage used as well, and it was a community effort to make the movie work, on location, real artefacts from the bombing, and actual survivors acting in the movie. The movie is scored by Akira Ifukube with a dirge for orchestra and choir that is powerfully affecting, much like, for example, adagios by Shostakovich or the Memorial to Lidice by Martinu; the wordless choral part if anything makes Akira's music more emotionally intense.

I used the words devastating and exposure earlier, without intending irony, but what about the word trigger, or triggering. Someone had to pull a trigger of sorts, one presumes, or at least press a button or two, to drop the atom bomb. Makes you think how juvenile, no, how infantile people are in the 21st century who either claim victimhood for having been 'triggered', or who worry overtly about triggering someone's feelings. Watch what happens when somehwere, out of sight, the a trigger is pulled; the gawping Japanese school kids and adults look up at the sky, wondering why the alarm hasn't gone off to tell them to take shelter. Watch what it meant to be alive in the aftermath of the blast. Then see if you can use the word 'triggered' ever again and call yourself sane.

Needless to say, Hiroshima (1953) is a difficult watch. It is tough like watching The Passion of the Christ is tough. It makes you desperate. It makes you want to scream. It makes you want to cry for your own comfort. It is an audiovisual lament, a threnody for people compelled to live at a time when a few individuals had developed the power and the will to potentially destroy nations, in the blink of an eye.

But one has to decide if a movie is the best way to explore this subject. In isolation, I'd say no, one needs more. The movie is based upon the accounts given by the children of Hiroshima. The movie goes on to include the bloodymindedness of the Japanese military, attempts to suppress the truth about what had happened so as not to dent morale - and don't forget this film's circulation was viciously delimited to not upset the political class or anyone on the US side of the story - but I suppose if you want to know more about the military strategic context for dropping the bomb then you need to look elsewhere; to a documentary or two, or read a history of the war. Maybe you want to go see the new Christopher Nolan movie, Oppenheimer (2023), although given his tendency towards aggressive barrages of music and noise - there are already reports that the actors' dialogue can barely be heard - and a potentially confusing non-linear timeline, chances are you'll not come out of the movie exactly enlightened. This film, Hiroshima, is based upon lived experience, and it is terrifying.

A must-see, if you've got the stomach for it.