August 7th, 2007 | 
Author: [ Reading time: 5 - 8 minutes ]
This documentary aired on HBO last night. I had seen the promos for it for a few weeks. Yesterday, on the 62nd anniversary of the attacks, it was broadcast, after years of waiting for the right time.
Having done all the research I have on dealing with and surviving a nuclear attack, including reading such classics as John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”, I was not fully prepared to hear from the actual victims and survivors of the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
It’s one thing to read about it. Still another to see the old films of before, during, and immediately after the attack.
To hear many of the very badly injured people tell their story in their own words, and see their wounds and injuries still affecting them even after 60+ years was powerful beyond words.
I found the documentary very objective, without any kind of sensationalism, editorial context, or slanting, and both the American and Japanese bureaucracies before and after are covered as well.
For any of you that have in your preps for planning for a nearby nuclear detonation (global thermonuclear war, or terrorist dirty bomb) there is a LOT to learn from this film.
It will be on many more times this month on HBO, and can even be seen on HBO’s website.
Here are several links….
main HBO page for the documentary…
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whitelightblackrain/index.html
Synopsis of the show…
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whitelightblackrain/synopsis.html
Debuting on the 62nd anniversary of the bombings, WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN provides a graphic, unflinching look at the reality of nuclear warfare through first-hand accounts of both survivors and American men who carried out the bombing missions.
“With WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN, I wanted to tell one of the great human stories of one of history’s monumental tragedies,” notes Okazaki, who met more than 500 survivors and interviewed more than 100 people before choosing the 14 subjects featured in the film. “The personal memories of the survivors are amazing, shocking and inspiring. They put a human face on the incalculable destruction caused by nuclear war.”
In addition to interviews with 14 atomic bomb survivors, many of whom have never spoken publicly before, WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN spotlights four Americans intimately involved in the bombings. Okazaki interweaves rarely seen, intense archival footage and photographs, banned for 25 years after the war, with survivors’ paintings and drawings, all of which convey the devastating toll of atomic warfare in human terms.
While 140,000 died in Hiroshima, and 70,000 in Nagasaki, the survivors – 85% of whom were civilians – not vaporized during the attacks continued to suffer burns, infection, radiation sickness and cancer, which would ultimately result in another 160,000 deaths. In a succession of riveting personal accounts, the film reveals both unimaginable suffering and extraordinary human resilience. Sakue Shimohira, ten years old at the time, recalls the moment she considered killing herself after losing the last member of her family, saying, “I realized there are two kinds of courage – the courage to die and the courage to live.”
Other survivors include: Kiyoko Imori, just blocks from the hypocenter, the only survivor of an elementary school of 620 students; Shigeko Sasamori, 13 years old at the time, one of the 25 “Hiroshima Maidens” brought to the U.S. for plastic surgery; Keiji Nakazawa, who lost his father, brother and two sisters, and devoted his life to retelling his story in comic books and animation; Shuntaro Hida, a young military doctor at the time, who began treating survivors immediately after the explosion and continues to provide care for them 60 years later; and Etsuko Nagano, who still can’t forgive herself for convincing her family to come to Nagasaki, just weeks before the bombing.
In addition to physical suffering, survivors were later subjected to intense discrimination from fellow Japanese, and received little or no help from the Japanese government. To this day, to identify oneself as an atomic-bomb survivor, or a descendant of a survivor in Japan, can invite prejudice.
The four Americans profiled are: Morris Jeppson, the weapon test officer on the Enola Gay mission to Hiroshima; Lawrence Johnston, a civilian employee of the University of California, which manages Los Alamos; Harold Agnew, a scientific advisor; and Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the navigator who believed the mission would end the war and save lives overall.
Today, as global tensions rise, the unthinkable once more becomes possible. The urgency of the warning conveyed in WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN is borne out by a comment from one of the four Americans: “We have opened Pandora’s box, and the genie can’t be stuffed back in the bottle.”
HBO Video releases WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN: THE DESTRUCTION OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI on DVD Aug. 7.
Steven Okazaki’s films, which explore the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, include “Days of Waiting,” winner of a Documentary Short Subject Oscar®, as well as a Peabody Award, and two other Oscar® nominees: “Unfinished Business” and last year’s Cinemax Reel Life presentation “The Mushroom Club.” Among his other documentaries are: “Hunting Tigers,” “Troubled Paradise,” “Americans Sons,” “The Fair” and the HBO documentary “Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street.” Visit the filmmaker’s website.
WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN: THE DESTRUCTION OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI is an HBO Documentary Films presentation, produced by Farallon Films; directed, written and produced by Steven Okazaki. For HBO: consulting editor, Geoff Bartz; supervising producer, Sara Bernstein; executive producers, Sheila Nevins and Robert Richter.
Interview with the filmmaker…
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whitelightblackrain/interview.html
Bios of the victims and even developers and delivery team of the bombs…
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/whitelightblackrain/subjects.html
Schedule of future broadcasts…dozens of them…
http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?ACTION_DETAIL=DETAIL&FOCUS_ID=621813
Filmmakers own website….
http://farfilm.com/web/ffnews.htm
Watch a one minute video from the film on this page…
http://www.hbo.com/docs/index.html
In conclusion, if you are SERIOUS about knowing the real threats of nuclear weapons to any human being, you must see this film to completely and fully understand what these weapons do to the human body….but that also, you can survive an attack depending on your preplanning, and understanding of how nukes work in the real world….and stay aware of world events.
As a prepper, author, husband and father, I can not stress enough how important this work is.
Watch it. Share it. Discuss it. And Learn from it.
Rich
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