Illuminating stories told by scientists who actually worked on the Manhattan…
Hiroshima Bound
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
HIROSHIMA BOUND is a personal documentary that tracks the construction of America's collective memory (or lack of one) of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It follows the obscure histories of specific photos and photographers, both Japanese and American, who visited Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bombings, counterposing this visual legacy with the stories of survivors, whose practice of speaking to small groups of students offers a modest but powerful counter-history to the official record.
The film uses its maker's own legacy as a child of the Atomic Age to look at the complexity of the representation of mass death, and the role of the archive in the digital era, taking viewers to the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, the International Center of Photography in New York, and to contemporary Hiroshima, in order to explore and 'unpack' the trauma and myth surrounding the culture of Hiroshima representation.
'A film that is both personal and universal. Very powerful ... Poetic and gripping.' - Peter Kuznitz, Director, Nuclear Studies Institute, American University
'A daunting and haunting project ... extraordinarily moving and simultaneously elucidating. The attention to the construction of the bomb and the images of the effects of the bomb is formidable.' - Lynne Sachs, filmmaker ( Your Day is My Night )
'There is no doubt this is an important document about our times and lives, which should both motivate and humble us all.' - Joke van Kampen, journalist and anti-nuclear activist
Citation
Main credits
Yoshida, Clara (on-screen participant)
Dijk, Claartje van (on-screen participant)
Sasamori, Shigeko (on-screen participant)
Lucas, Katherine G. (on-screen participant)
Bailey, Marilee (on-screen participant)
Cronin, Robert (on-screen participant)
Weller, Anthony (on-screen participant)
Lucas, Martin (film director)
Lucas, Martin (screenwriter)
Lucas, Martin (editor of moving image work)
Lucas, Martin (director of photography)
Watson, David (composer)
Norwood, Khamisi (director of photography)
Villaro, Leandro (director of photography)
Other credits
Writer, director, editor, Martin Lucas; music, David Watson; cinematographers, Khamisi Norwood, Leandro Villaro, Martin Lucas.
Distributor subjects
American Studies; Asian Studies; Cinema Studies; Conflict Resolution; East Asia; History (World); Japan; Nuclear Issues; Political Science; World War IIKeywords
WEBVTT
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[sil.]
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Imagine, that this is a journey. I could
be waiting for a train somewhere in Japan.
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I could stand in front of the station and
like all travellers have my picture taken.
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For instance, me and that other
child of the Atomic Age, Astro Boy.
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Imagine, I could send you
a postcard when I arrive.
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I would look for one like this
one, a beautiful afternoon,
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the warm light over the river, a light breeze to
make the reflections in the water shimmer slightly.
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[music]
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If I sent you a card, you could ask, \"Why?\"
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I could answer that it\'s an old
story that has me on this train.
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A story that starts and ends
with a plane and a cloud.
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[music]
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At 8:15 in the morning of
August 6th, Japanese time,
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the first atomic bomb gets an enemy target.
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A bomb was aimed to explode about
zero point that sparked in the city
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at the junction of the Morito east
zone and outer rivers. Again…
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At o\' 8:15 on August 6, over
military target Hiroshima
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bombed here major parody took over.
It was above to drop
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the atom bomb.
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[sil.]
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[music]
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A bomb of unpresidentive
destructiveness had exploded.
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Three days later, a second atom bomb
was dropped on Nagasaki. And again.
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The un imagine of destructive atomic
bomb protected by elite scientists.
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First mission, the industrial
city of Hiroshima.
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Second mission, the port of Nagasaki.
Japan has its choice,
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compete surrender or complete ruin.
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A plane and a cloud. For Americans, the bomb is
the grace note of hard won victory ending the war
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and saving lives. For Japan, a
fig leaf, a symbol of peace
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covering the legacy of Japanese militarism.
The dead in Hiroshima
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about 130,000, in Nagasaki, about 70,000.
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The intense heat, the blast,
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and the radiation spread instantly. The
meaning of these events is still frozen
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at that moment in 1945.
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I was born in August, 1950,
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five years after Hiroshima was bombed.
My early years were spent in
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one of the new suburbs that had sprouted up across
California to house the families of returning veterans.
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In fact, the evidence of
what was called the war
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even though America was already engaged
in a new one was still part of life
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in a casual way. My parents got divorced
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when I was three and we left the suburbs.
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Berkeley was a company town
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with over 100 departments and a dozen
colleges. It produced knowledge
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the way Detroit produced cars.
Hard science ruled
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and the king of the sciences was physics.
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[music]
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The IV covered halls on campus were
being crowded out by modern buildings.
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The big cars and brand new freeways promised
an exhilarating ride to the future.
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Even the Chancellor, Klein Seaboard
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was a physicist who got his Nobel
Prize for discovering plutonium here.
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Soon it was my turn to fly.
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My stepfather Doug and a neighbor Bill and a glow
plug engine running on nitrox and castor oil.
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These stats were men who went
to school on the G.I. Bill.
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Doug was in the Korean war.
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Bill, a mathematician who
fought in North Africa.
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With his engineering degree from Berkeley,
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Doug got a job at Livermore. He was
working on the Polaris missile,
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a center piece of America\'s nuclear arsenal.
I started to hear terms like thrust,
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pay load, re-entering
discussed over cocktails.
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…expressly designed for the job, U.S.S. George
Washington. The tests are stirring climax
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to a four year program to
meet the nuclear submarine
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and the intermediate range ballistic missile. Now the subs
missile hatches are clear… Doug brought a film like this one
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and this has been fired to my school.
We watched it in the basement.
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[sil.]
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The first missile after a startling
half angle emergence corrects itself
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and sours down range 1,100 miles to
its target with remarkable accuracy.
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The image of the cheering
sailors… Two hours later…
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I learned to cheer too. Another successful shot.
An achievement major strategic importance
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for America\'s defense.
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[music]
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Years later, I would realize
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that during the duck and cover air
raid drills, we were taking refuge
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in the very same basement where I\'d watched
the missile movies with my classmates.
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[music]
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The bomb, I grew up in its shadow.
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A bomb that can split a human
mind as easily as an atom.
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Two kids, one who would be pilot,
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the other an eternal target
cowering in fear undermine desk.
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It\'s my bomb. It\'s been waiting for me
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for 60 years.
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The film Hiroshima Mon Amour
directed by Alain Resnais
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scripted by Marguerite Duras.
It came out in 1959,
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when the wounds of World War II were still
fresh in the minds of a generation.
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The film insisted that coming to terms
with Hiroshima was an impossible task.
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[sil.]
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[music]
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\"You saw nothing,\" he says.
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But the Japanese survivor, there is a
complete gap between the experience of
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those people who are in Hiroshima
on August 6th and everyone else.
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No visit to the museum,
no trip to the hospital,
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no tragic photo will ever close it.
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Why does the first and still most famous film
about that event start from the position
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that it is impossible for us to
know what happened in Hiroshima?
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Why is it so passionately important
for the French woman and for us
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that we do understand? (inaudible)
the conceptual distance
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between memory and history was uncrossable.
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I can only add that as surely as a black hole\'s
gravity bends the light of distance stars,
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the dropping of the bomb distorted the way
we see the world. The gap is uncrossable.
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But I\'m going to give it a try.
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[sil.]
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Hiroshima, I\'m here where
I was with my camera,
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with my wife, Prudent, with Mrs. Yoshida
and her friend Mrs. Kuwana(ph).
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[sil.]
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I was here before as a young student.
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I too had my picture taken standing
in front of the atomic dome.
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[sil.]
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[sil.]
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My memories are very, very simple
when we heard some big sound,
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my mother and my little brother
and sister we just hidden the,
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under the… under the roof of the
house and the we were just scared
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and my father didn\'t to come
back at that, on that day
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so we were so worried about him
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but I clearly remember, he was so wounded and
all glasses in his body and he was bloody
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and that was scaring me.
I was scared about that.
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And then when I looked up the sky,
the sky was just like a blood,
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bloody red, just red. Ten thousand degrees,
00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:24.999
the heat of the fireball was so intense that
the oxygen and nitrogen naturally found an air
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and normally unreactive toward
each other form nitrogen dioxide
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a blood red gas.
00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:43.000
[music]
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I wonder Hiroshima, I went the streets
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the buildings to speak of their pain of
the obliteration of their residents.
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But this is a modern city.
Only a few memorials
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and the memories of its citizens make
it different from Houston or Helsinki.
00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:18.000
[sil.]
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Monument for the students, memorial
tower to the mobilize the students.
00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:29.999
[sil.]
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My sister was at junior high school student
and at that time they all have to go,
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I know, go and work to toward done. That,
tare down, to tare down the houses
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because once in there fire comes,
you know, they really have to,
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not because the fire won\'t be spreaded
out so they just tare down the houses.
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That\'s the work they really
have to do every day.
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Before the atom bomb the U.S. had already
perfected a firebombing technique
00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:04.999
using Naipaul that had
destroyed large parts of
00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:09.999
over 60 Japanese cities. Girls like Mrs.
Yoshida\'s sister had been mobilized
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to create firebreaks as a countermeasure.
On the day the bomb dropped,
00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:19.999
Mrs. Yoshida\'s sister survived.
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Over 6,000 did not. And they
did that work downtown.
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Even in this area, a lots of younger, younger
students, you know, working are under this area too.
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And this area is the most damaged place
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and a lots of students passed away, died.
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A local reporter, (inaudible)was the only
known photographer, ground zero that day.
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His testimony was translated for
a 1995 exhibition in Tokyo.
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\"Near the Miyuki bridge,
there was a police box.
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Most of the victims who gathered there were junior
high school girls mobilized to evacuate buildings
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and they were outside when the bomb fell.
Having been directly exposed
00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:09.999
to the heat race, they were covered
with blisters the size of balls.
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The blisters were starting to burst open
and their skins hung down like rugs.
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When I saw this I thought I would take a picture and I
picked up my camera but I couldn\'t push the shutter.\"
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[sil.]
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Yes. This is a place that people come all over the
world, from all over the world but how about for you?
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Is this a place that you
visit in your own life?
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Yes, once in a while I visited but
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uh… Even if I take my visitors off by,
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you know, people from foreign countries,
I just take them to the, you know,
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uh… memorial. Peace Memorial Exhibition.
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But I just ask them, just try to
see, but I just wait outside,
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you know, I don\'t want, it, it\'s very hard
for me to look at it again and again,
00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:24.999
you know, about the same thing.
So I just ask them,
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you know, to look at it by themselves.
00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:34.999
[sil.]
00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:39.999
Matsushiga(ph) was unable to process his images for four or
five days and even then he had to do so in the open at night
00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:44.999
rinsing the film in a stream.
Notice how these photos,
00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:49.999
their surfaces scarred and pitted were
clearly part of the disaster they depict.
00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:54.999
Note how the photographer has taken pictures
of people\'s backs and not shown their faces.
00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:59.999
I\'m guessing but I can imagine him reluctant
out of respect for fellow human beings
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whose faces are no longer recognizable.
00:16:05.000 --> 00:16:13.000
[music]
00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:19.999
In 2006, I heard about a
discovery I couldn\'t ignore.
00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.999
Over 700 rescued photos of a dead city in
an archive, a photo archive in New York.
00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:33.000
[sil.]
00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:44.999
Well, let\'s start with box number one.
I\'m hoping to look at them on.
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Great.
00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:58.000
[music]
00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:04.999
Great, thank you so much.
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There are hundreds of photos,
small, anonymous and brown with age
00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:14.999
discovered in the suburbs of Boston in the
year 2000, while the original negatives
00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:19.999
were classified secret and buried in the Pentagon\'s faults, these
prints found their way into the hands of a naval architect,
00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:24.999
Lieutenant Robert L. Corps B. who
worked on a postwar study of
00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:29.999
the effectiveness of the bombing.
After his death,
00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:34.999
his files were stored by his daughter. A few years later
a young man cleaning out her basement got the photos.
00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:39.999
Put out with the trash by mistake
in Watertown Massachusetts,
00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:44.999
they were discovered by the owner of a local
diner who recognized their significance
00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:49.999
and started the sequence of events
that led to their coming here.
00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:58.000
[music]
00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:19.999
[sil.]
00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.999
The images are the work
of the United States
00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:29.999
Strategic Bombing Survey.
00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.999
Because it is a global bomber,
00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:39.999
around it has been built
an entire U.F.O.\'s,
00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.999
the 20th war theatre is the world itself.
00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:49.999
When a bomb has been dropped,
00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.999
the effect should be measured. This is
central to the logic of strategic bombing
00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.999
in total war where the goal is
to defeat an enemy nation state
00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.999
by destroying its industrial capacity to wage
war rather than its actual military forces.
00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:09.999
[music]
00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.999
The measurement yields quantifiable results.
How many square miles of destruction?
00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
How far from the point of blast?
What is the effect on
00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
reinforced concrete on
steel girders, on brick?
00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
Photographs are an essential
part of this effort.
00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
[music]
00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
Like any autopsy,
00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
this is a highly specialized procedure designed
to determine the exact cause of death.
00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
The word comes from the Greek, autopsia,
00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
to see for one\'s self. Here we are seeing
the most instrumental use of photography
00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
dedicated to scientific measurement.
00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
At second look, the effort
reveals its pathos.
00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
No ruler, no clipboard, no compass can
help us see what has happened here.
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:18.000
[music]
00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
With U.S. troops victorious in Okinawa
00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
and readying to invade Japan. The allies meet
in San Francisco to create the United Nations,
00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
three weeks before the first
explosion of an atomic bomb.
00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
The charter of the United Nations
which you are now signing
00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
is a solid structure up on which
we can build for a better world.
00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
History will honor you for it.
But win the victory in Europe
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
and the final victory in Japan
00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
in this most destructive of all wars, you
have won a victory against war itself.
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
A postcard from UN headquarters.
00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
The General Assembly dome on the right.
The architecture is mid century modern
00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
but it\'s May, 2010 and the
discussion is nuclear disarmament.
00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
The Cold War binge has been over for
20 years at the hangover lingers.
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
As a confidence building measure,
the United States announces that
00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
the exact size of its stockpile
of nuclear weapons numbers 5,113.
00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:38.000
[sil.]
00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
Hibakusha means
00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
uh… atomic bomb survivors came to…
00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
from Japan then uh… I\'m the one now
00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
uh… came to New York.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
So we\'re doing uh… different schools
junior high and high school,
00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
very beginning that was
only near the August
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
comes every year.
00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
Uh… Media come to me, they
ask questions, interview,
00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
then they remember it is way more so and…
00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
and specially in the 10 years now
00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
uh… more, more I\'m going to
different places to speak.
00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
Ordinary, I go to school
like you people study
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
but that morning in Japan, those time,
00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
most men went into war
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
so only old men or women\'s
and children\'s rest.
00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
Student have to come to the clean up.
00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
Just the moment, I start clean
and I heard the aero planes
00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
and I look up the sky, that day
was the beautiful blue sky.
00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
No cloud, only silver plane,
00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
white tail, blue sky,
00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
imagine, it\'s beautiful, right?
So I told to my classmate,
00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
look up the sky, it is beautiful, playing.
00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
And same time, when I
pointed it, I saw that
00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
aero plane dropping something white
00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
and also continuously, that knock me down.
00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
See, as the bomb dropped it,
00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
they don\'t bomb and explode. Not like that.
00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
They drop in air, explode.
00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
So the pressure knock me down.
00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
Shigeko, unlike the hero for an ace movie
does not worry that we weren\'t there.
00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
Her world was up ended 60 years ago.
00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
Einstein\'s simple equation
turned everything upside down.
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
Our notions of time, space, the nature of matter
and entire universe was called into question
00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
when Shigeko looked up and saw a
beautiful plane in the blue morning sky.
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
A postcard from Berkeley,
00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
the Dome of the famous Lawrence
Radiation laboratory in the foreground.
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
It was here that plutonium
was first isolated in 1940.
00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
[sil.]
00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
When I was growing up, my stepmother Duckie was for me
what a favorite aunt or uncle might be for other children.
00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
She worked at what was
known locally as The Lab.
00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:38.000
[sil.]
00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
Verily, Verily, this is Duckie here.
00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
Duckie girlfriend.
00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
Yes. Yes, it had been a long time. My God.
00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
We got old. We got old.
00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
I was hired in 1955, as a scanner and
that was for we look through microscopes
00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
we looked into film emotion
that was just in big blocks
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
and told us where the particles had gone as these
blocks were set into the beam line of the Brewerton.
00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
And the Brewerton had just
been built when I was hired.
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
The Brewerton used an incredibly strong
circle of pulsing magnets to spin the protons
00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
are used to bombard the target atomic
nuclei. Physicists had predicted
00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
the existence of anti-matter. It was
here in these scans that it was found
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
along with a host of new
elements and particles.
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
Every 10 seconds there would
be what they call the spill
00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
when the Brewerton would, the beam
would fire through the targets.
00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
So you have a lot of images on one film.
There were usually 1,000 foot roles of this
00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
uh… lino graph pattern. It was, it was the
different, I can\'t remember the name of the film
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
but it was the aircraft film.
And big magazines and as I say,
00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
we were all in excellent physical shape because we
we were handling these. The nuclear fission was
00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
first discovered in 1939. The University
of California under Ernest Lawrence
00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
was well positioned to be at the
forefront of atomic experimentation.
00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
During World War II, Lawrence made
the university and its radiation lab
00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
central to the Manhattan Project. The American
effort produce the first atomic bomb,
00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
big science was born.
00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
But as a particle went through the liquid hydrogen
it would leave bubbles behind the way bubbles
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
coming in a glass of beer and they
would show up by the way it was lit.
00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
(inaudible) of what we would be looking at.
There would be, what they would call,
00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
you know, an interaction where two particles
would collide or several particles would collide
00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
and they were something else would
be given of. Already in 1936,
00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
Verner Heisenberg had demonstrated the uncertainty
principle. He showed that the observer of the experiment
00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
cannot be separated from the results.
Despite this knowledge,
00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
it never entered into the thinking of the
Berkeley scientists that this new world of
00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
random and chaotic energies generated by fleeting
interactions would become completely untangled
00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
with an excess tensional
threat to all human life.
00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
Every day, seven days a week, 365 a year,
00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
we processed film and one year
we processed two million feet,
00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
two million feet of film in one year.
Then uh… they broke that down
00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
to a digital readout, direct
read out to the computers
00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
and no more film was processed. So they\'ve
scattered us all over the hill, broke up the group
00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
and gave us all jobs and I
have got a good job working
00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
with people who had experiments in the Brewerton and
that was where they were really doing a physics
00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
and that was the best job of all.
That was absolutely wonderful job.
00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
Don\'t look up too much.
00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
Just to be around that excitement of
maybe we\'re going to find this particle
00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
or maybe they\'re going to be able to prove this or that
theory, we didn\'t even know what the theory was sometimes
00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
but the excitement of the physicist
was what made it a good job.
00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
(inaudible) set up there, it had four different
tanks in between the magnets actions.
00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
So all this steel around
the certain portions,
00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
magnets actions and then this (inaudible).
00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
Behind you, that\'s where they discovered
plutonium and… Yes. …in the, during the war
00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
but after the war it didn\'t have that kind of…
No, there was never anything to do with weapons
00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
on the Hill that we knew of. We could have had clearance
which they gave people who were involved with weapons
00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
but that was only given to us if we
were going to be, going to Livermore
00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
to deliver film and we never went out there. I never
drove to Livermore. Don\'t even know what was until
00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
after I had retired. Uh… but that
was where the weapons were studied.
00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
Thank heavens, no, we had
nothing like that here.
00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
The last time I was here was over 40 years
ago. I remember skateboarding down this hill
00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
and dodging in an out behind the
shielding of the Brewerton.
00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
The excitement of the lab being in the
presence of the deepest exploration of
00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
the nature of the universe the
matter itself has stayed with me.
00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
[sil.]
00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
Pure physics, a dream of lost innocence.
The Brewerton decommissioned in 1993,
00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
it\'s being demolished. It\'s
down to come down soon.
00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
The study of particle physics has
moved to Chicago and to Geneva.
00:30:55.000 --> 00:31:03.000
[sil.]
00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:13.000
[music]
00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
Louis Blériot was one of several early aviators
to bring the dream of flying to a broad public
00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
at the dawn of the 20th century.
00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
After several unsuccessful tries, his
flight across the English Channel in 1911,
00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
the first in a heavier than air
craft made him a superstar.
00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
One French documentary quotes him as he
launches himself on his dangerous journey.
00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
My mind is calm without any emotion,
without any impression of reality.
00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
[music]
00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
But the dream of flight
00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
once realized quickly led
to another realization.
00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
No sooner was malarial home from
this trip across the channel
00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
when the military forces in several countries
began purchasing his planes for war.
00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
[music]
00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
The Italian flyer Gavotti
00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
made aviation history in Libya
on November 1st, 1911 in a war
00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
with the autumn empire dropping bombs
on two Turkish held the races.
00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
In the World War I, just a few years later,
00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
the airplanes potential as a viewing platform was
arguably more important from a strategic point of view
00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
than the development of
bomber and fighter aircraft.
00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
The US Army photo division under famed art
photographer Edward Steichen took millions of photos
00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
meticulously documenting the ruined
cities of the Western Front.
00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
In the 1930s, planes carrying
bombs came into their own
00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
while Japanese fire bombing of cities
in China through global condemnation,
00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
it was the 1937 destruction of the Basque town of
Guernica by German dive bombers that redefined war.
00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
No longer with their lines of battle,
00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
no longer were civilians safe behind them.
00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
[sil.]
00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
I don\'t know how long out conscious,
you know, when I start to sitting up,
00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
they look around, I couldn\'t see anything
00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
and I didn\'t feel anything. I
cannot hear anything, just numb.
00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
And all I can see,
00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
the blackness, dark.
Nothing moving, nothing.
00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
Then for a while, when the fogs go away,
00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
fog and the pollution clear,
00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
then I saw people moving.
We\'re looking here
00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
at the very first page
of his first dispatch
00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
written on September 6th, \'45,
the day he arrived four weeks
00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
after the bomb had exploded and he
says, \"Here with powers first known
00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
eyewitness account results
atomic bomb drop Nagasaki.
00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
Walk in Nagasaki streets
and you walk in ruins.\"
00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
The atomic bombs peculiar disease uncured
00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
because it is untreated and
untreated because it is undiagnosed
00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
is still snatching away lives here.
Men, women and children
00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
with no outward marks of injury
are dying daily in hospitals.
00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
Some after having walked around for three
or four weeks thinking they have escaped.
00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
The doctors here have
every modern medicament
00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
but candidly confessed in talking to the writer,
the first allied observer to reach Nagasaki
00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
since the surrender that the answer
to the melody is beyond them.
00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
Their patience though their skins are whole
are simply passing away under their eyes.
00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
Finding his father stories
buried among his belongings
00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
when he passed away in 2002, Anthony took it
upon himself to get the dispatches published
00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
for the first time, 60 years
after they were written.
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
My father George Weller was
born in 1907, in Boston.
00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
At the end of the \'30s, he took on
a job with the Chicago daily news
00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
as a foreign correspondent
for the coming war.
00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
He was on the last freighter safely
out of Singapore when it fell.
00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
He was on the very last boat out of Java. You
know, his goal was to be always the first man in
00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
and the last man out. Two American
planes appearing at the clear midday sky
00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
let fall the blow which
clinched Japan\'s defeat
00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
and decided her surrender. The mystery
of the atomic bomb is still sealed,
00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
the ruins are here in testimony
that not only Nagasaki
00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
but the world was shaken.
He would often say
00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
that he lost his war in Nagasaki
and he\'d been covering the Pacific
00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
from early 1942 on and had felt
00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
a set by MacArthur censors at every turn
00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
and this seemed the final straw that a
month after the war ended when there was
00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
no legitimate military
reason for censorship.
00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
Umm… He was totally shut down. In
fact, what MacArthur did was declare
00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
all of southern Japan off limits.
He wanted to open it like
00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
a slow cookie box with no risk
00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
because he had his eye on the presidency. One
other reporter eluded MacArthur censorship
00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
headlined the atomic plague, Wilfred (inaudible)
story in The London Daily Express shock the world
00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
with details of the new bomb.
00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic
bomb destroyed the city and shook the world,
00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
people are still dying.
Mysteriously and horribly.
00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
People who are uninsured in the cataclysm from an unknown
something that I can only describe as the atomic plague.
00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
Hiroshima does not look like a bomb city.
It looks as if a monster steamroller
00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
has passed over it and
squashed it out of existence.
00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:48.000
[music]
00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
The radiation is invisible but the body is
transparent like film a motion exposed.
00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
[sil.]
00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
A hand turning a wheel, a foot on the road,
00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
a brief sit down on the bank steps.
00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
At 10,000 degrees,
00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
the citizens are inscribed into
the surface of their own city.
00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:28.000
[music]
00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
The B-29 that Chicago saw,
00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
the Enola Gay started its journey
from here wind over Utah.
00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
In the desert light, the dropping
of the bomb was rehearsed.
00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
This is a national historical site but
mainly it\'s a side of abandonment.
00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
The ammo dump, the launch pad,
the bunker where the scientists
00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
and military officers would watch.
00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
And this hangar, this empty hangar.
00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
I take picture after picture but
the banal facade reveals nothing
00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
as the French filmmaker Chris Marker once
said, \"History throws out its empty bottles.\"
00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:33.000
[music]
00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
A short time ago, an American airplane
00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
dropped on bomb on Hiroshima and
destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.
00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
That bomb has more power
than 20,000 tons of TNT.
00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
The Japanese began the war
from the air at Pearl Harbor.
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
They have been repaid many fouls.
00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
President Truman\'s words came to define
00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
what might be called America\'s collective
memory of the end of World War II.
00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
But each of us has our own Hiroshima. In mind, it is what it
goes on to say that seems to speak most clearly of the world
00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
created by the bomb.
00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
We have spent more than two billion dollars
00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
on the greatest scientific gamble
in history and we have one.
00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
But the greatest marvel that\'s
not the size of the enterprise,
00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
its secrecy or its cost.
00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
But the achievement of scientific brains in making
it work. Both science and industry work together
00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
under the direction of
the United States Army
00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
which achieved a unique success
in amazingly short time.
00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
What has been is the
greatest achievement of
00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
organized science in history.
00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
[music]
00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
The airfield carefully lit for cameras
reminds us that the visual images
00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
connected to the atom bomb are a key aspect
of its power into usefulness as a weapon.
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
The Enola Gay was accompanied on
its mission by two other bombers
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
full of cameramen and scientific personnel.
00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
One observer Luis Alvarez,
a physicist from Berkeley,
00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
my stepmother would later work for wrote a letter to
his young son on the plane coming back from Hiroshima.
00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
\"Dear Walter, it was tough to take off
00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
on this flight not knowing whether
I would ever see you again
00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
but lots of other fathers have been in the same spot
many times before in this war and I had a job to do.
00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
So I can\'t claim to be any sort of hero.
00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
What regrets I have about being a party to killing and
maiming thousands of Japanese civilians this morning
00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
are tempered with the hope that
this terrible weapon we\'ve created
00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
will bring the countries of the world together and
prevent further wars. Alfred Nobel thought that
00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
his invention of high explosives would have
that effect by making wars too terrible.
00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
But unfortunately, it had
just the opposite reaction.
00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
Our new destructive force is so many thousands of
times worse that it may realize Nobel\'s dream.\"
00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:40.000
[sil.]
00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
A great towering mushroom effect could
be… Although any sufficiently large bomb
00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
will create a similar cloud, it was
the one over Nagasaki that was dubbed
00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
a mushroom by William L. Lawrence, The New York
Times reporter who spoke of the bomb creating cloud
00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
\"A pillar of purple fire out of the
top of which came a giant mushroom.\"
00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
The reporter was also the
public relations man
00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
from the Manhattan Project. In terms of
PR, the cloud shaped like a vegetable
00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
was a real gift cloaking
events in a terrifying fog.
00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:28.000
[sil.]
00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
Yosuke Yamahata was dispatched to Nagasaki as
soon as news came of the bombing on August 9th.
00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
He arrived early the next morning and started
taking pictures as soon as there was light.
00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
His images are the most
extensive documentation of
00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
the effects of the bomb. Speaking in 1952,
00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
Yamahata described his own sense
of his mission like this,
00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
\"Human memory has a tendency to slip and
critical judgment to fade with the years
00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
and with changes in lifestyle
and circumstance but the camera
00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
just as it sees to the grim realities of that
time brings the stark facts of seven years ago
00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
before our eyes without the need
for the least embellishment.\"
00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:23.000
[music]
00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
Yamahata\'s pictures are not facts.
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
They are images and as eloquent as they are
the photographs are almost never seen.
00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
In 1994, these photos were among
00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
the first images removed from the planned
exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution
00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
that included the Enola Gay.
00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:58.000
[music]
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
Pure science, pure art, we
want to stand above the world
00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
and observe but there\'s
no position of safety
00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
neither in physics nor in photography.
A picture isn\'t a thing,
00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
it\'s a relationship. Looking at a picture
00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
if we\'re not changed by what
we see, we\'ve seen nothing.
00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
[sil.]
00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
Then it came to my mind, the
fire bomb dropped the nearby.
00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
Of course, nobody didn\'t know the
atomic bomb the thing, right?
00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.999
Then I just follow the people who still,
00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.999
I dint feel anything.
00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:54.999
Even I dint know I was burned.
00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:59.999
All my face, that the half up the body
00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.999
and I just see my hand,
arms, these shoulders,
00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.999
because my numbness,
didn\'t hear, didn\'t feel,
00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:14.999
I just followed people. By the time,
00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
the more, clear to see more, the
people moving into the river.
00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
By the time I got there,
00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
already the river was covered people,
dead people. Then all the sudden,
00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
baby screaming,
00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
open popped in my conscious
and hear and then
00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
uh… I saw the baby was
all, can\'t tell the face
00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
uh… body is
00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
or not know eyes, I couldn\'t
tell the eye, the mouth,
00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
and the mother is the same way.
See, those people are hurt
00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
but are able to move to go away,
00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
but still, everybody is like
an, like a, not human being.
00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:18.000
[music]
00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
(inaudible).
00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
The tilt up…
00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
[music]
00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
The slow reveal from a feature film that
will never be made from this footage,
00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
footage there was interred
in a vault for 40 years.
00:47:55.000 --> 00:48:03.000
[music]
00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
There may be a hospital in
Hiroshima but I can\'t show you.
00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
There maybe a church but
I can\'t take you there,
00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
not even inside the damaged Cathedral.
The careful composition,
00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
the woman in the foreground, the flowers,
00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
the onlookers standing in a kind
of Greek chorus in the back.
00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
[music]
00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
As eloquent as these images are when
they were declassified in the 1980s,
00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
they seemed like the end to a story
but there is no ending here.
00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:53.000
[music]
00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
I have never been here before
00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
to the New Mexico desert. The
good thing is that it\'s here,
00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
it offers space for contemplation. I
remember my stepfather came here for tests
00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
in the 1960s returning home with
Hopi Katrina dolls as souvenirs.
00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
[music]
00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
White Sands is best known for being the
site of the first atomic weapon test.
00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
The sign quotes J. Robert Oppenheimer
00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
the father of the bomb quoting
Shiva, the Hindu god of death.
00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
\"Now I am become death,
the destroyer of worlds.\"
00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
Shiva wrote good verse but
human beings made the bomb.
00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:53.000
[sil.]
00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
There is a small park
00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
dedicated to the different
missiles tested at this location
00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
used from World War II to Iraq.
Today, we have new wars
00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
with new kinds of weapons. Drones
dealing death from half a planet away.
00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
Here, I find the casing
for a second Fat Man bomb
00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
without its plutonium core.
00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
My camera picks it out clearly in the golden
light of the afternoon sun in the quiet
00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
only the sound of the desert
dubs in the background.
00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
[sil.]
00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
My mother looking for me
00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
every day go out to the city, all
over the dead bodies on the street
00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
and people hurt gathering any place she go.
00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
All over (inaudible) she couldn\'t find it.
But that day, she came
00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
to… to help the people to court in my name
00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
and I say, here I am
00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
and she get call, yeah,
yeah, my mother heard
00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
very weak, small voice,
\"Here I am, here I am.
00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
She followed the sound then looked,
00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
she… she couldn\'t recognize.
00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
If you can imagine, when you make
toast and you forgot the toast,
00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
the smoke start the toaster,
then you popped up to get up
00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
just like this and the rough.
Have you had experience?
00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
Yes. Yeah? Yes. Can you just imagine
00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.999
my whole face and hair all that?
00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:04.999
The big ball here in my face,
00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
same burnt, rough.
00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:15.000
So how can she tell?
00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.999
Medium shot, a Japanese male searches through
ruins of his former home for salvageable items.
00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
In the background can be seen the
ruins of the Catholic Church.
00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
Medium shocked for Japanese boys
00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:39.999
searching through rubble for salvage.
00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.999
Shigeko told me one thing made her sad,
00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.999
she remembers the first 13 years of her life
before there was such a thing as the atom bomb.
00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:54.999
\"We have a post-war generations,\" she said
and I\'ll never know what that was like.
00:52:55.000 --> 00:53:03.000
[music]
00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:18.000
[sil.]
Distributor: Icarus Films
Length: 56 minutes
Date: 2015
Genre: Expository
Language: English
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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