Apologies for the delay in posting Wells Dunbar's review of the film that won honors for Best Feature Documentary at the San Diego Asian Film Festival, which concludes tonight.
Hibakusha are of a rare, terrible distinction: they are the survivors of the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought World War II to a swift, unfathomable end.
Sakue Shimohira is a Hibakusha who has devoted her life to the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, and is the focus of The Last Atomic Bomb. She's a strong, tireless figure, comfortable taking her message to a New York high school, 10 Downing Street, or the gates of the White House.
Interspersed with Shimohira's travelogue is harrowing archival footage of Nagaskai and her citizens after the blast. Several interviews are also inter-cut throughout the film, exploding the myths that the bomb was necessary to save American lives from an arduous Japan invasion. Instead, despite a weakened Japan being on the edge of surrender, the film postulates that the massive military-industrial buildup of the Manhattan Project, and the desire to dictate post-war terms to the USSR, compelled the US to become the destroyer of worlds.
Further hurting the radiated, sickly survivors was American implementation of a press code that silenced any critical analysis of the blast in the following years, leading to ostracism and quarantine of the Hibakusha; additionally, a US science team was on hand to document the deadly, inhuman aftereffects of the bomb, but did nothing to alleviate the suffering.
The Last Atomic Bomb won Best Feature Documentary honors at the SDAFF. Aside from being a testament to Sakue Shimohira and her work, it's also an achievement for director Robert Richter. He's an old hand at documentary work, and it shows; a part of the mythic Edward R. Murrow-Fred Friendly "CBS Reports" team, Richter's churned out provocative, workmanlike documentaries for PBS, politicos, and others for years.
Watching The Last Atomic Bomb, it's hard not to think of Robert McNamara's admission in The Fog of War that if America lost World War II, her generals and war-makers would be tried for war crimes. Indeed, history is written by the winners. The Last Atomic Bomb is a haunting reminder of the costs of war, and an impassioned cry to keep it at bay.
LINKS
Director Robert Richter's Site
Review by Wells Dunbar
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