On the morning of August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, an American B-29, dropped the first atomic bomb in the history of warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. Detonating some 600+ feet above the ground, the bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, obliterated everything within one square mile while collapsing structures and starting fires as far as 4-miles away.
Though difficult to ascertain, original estimates put the dead at about 66,000, with many more severely injured. Due to the long-term effects of radiation poisoning, it was eventually believed as many as 200,000 perished as a result of the blast.
Those are the facts and figures, the information found in most accounts of the bombing. What 1953’s Hiroshima does is go beyond the statistics, covering this horrific event at ground level, from the point of view of those who suffered through it, and those who lost their lives.
Financed by the Japan Teachers Union, Hiroshima opens in 1953, as Mr. Kiligawa (Eiji Okada) and his pupils are listening to a radio broadcast about the bombing. Suddenly, one student, Michiko (Isako Machida), cries out for the program to stop. She is bleeding from her nose, and it is determined that Michiko, one of several students who actually experienced the bombing, is suffering from Leukemia, known as the “A-Bomb disease”.
From there, Hiroshima takes us back to that fateful day in August of 1945, as students are heading to school when the flash in the sky arrives. Those who survive, including a middle-school class and a mother frantically searching for her children, try to make sense of it all. The injured wander aimlessly, many burned beyond recognition, with some falling over and dying in the middle of the street. Endo (Yoshi Kato) and his sister are looking for their parents, only to learn their mother is dead and their father dying from radiation poisoning.
Directed by Hideo Sekigawa, Hiroshima plays like a docudrama, with citizens of the actual city, many of whom survived the bombing, serving as extras (mostly during the blast’s immediate aftermath). And while the film does utilize actual footage of the tragedy, including views of the city post-bombing and the injuries sustained by the survivors, such moments are kept to a minimum.
As Hiroshima also reminds us, the terror did not end with the bombing. The effects would be felt for months, even years afterwards. In some of the movie’s more poignant scenes, orphans learn how to beg for food, while a hospital caring for the sick and wounded plants radish seeds, in the hopes it might prove the ground is not poisoned. Perhaps most heartbreaking of all is an early scene in which the students of Mr. Kitagawa’s class are thumbing through a book titled Not For Us: Letters from the Youth of East and West Germany, in which German students, writing letters to their Japanese counterparts, state their belief that Japan was used as the “guinea pig” for the atomic bomb, and not Germany, because of their race and the color of their skin (I have heard that Truman was reluctant to use the bomb on Germany for this very reason).
Yes, Hiroshima is an accurate account of the chaos and confusion, the anger and sorrow, that followed in the wake of the bombing. It is based in part on the book Children of the A-Bomb, a first-hand account of kids who survived the ordeal. But unlike history books, facts were of secondary concern to the filmmakers. Hiroshima is about the emotion, the trauma, and, ultimately, the fear of further wars that swept through Japan. A horrifying glimpse of the aftermath of the atomic bomb and a dramatically charged anti-war film, Hiroshima delivers its message like no history book ever could.
Rating: 9 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment