But this disturbing phenomenon of historical amnesia is hardly unique to that country. This inability to identify such a momentous event, particularly by the younger generation in Japan, troubles Okazaki. In the opening sequence, the filmmaker asks teenagers on the streets of modern-day Hiroshima if they know which event occurred on August 6, 1945. Okazaki, who won an Oscar in 1991 for his documentary Days of Waiting about a Caucasian artist interned with Japanese-Americans in the US during World War II, has created in White Light, Black Rain a worthy and deeply moving film. These voices and their descriptions shed light on one of the darkest chapters in the history of world imperialism, and serve as a reminder of the dangers that exist at present as the American ruling elite threatens to plunge the world into new conflagrations. Their accounts reveal, in the most personal and shocking manner, the horror that resulted from these barbaric crimes. The new HBO film, made by veteran documentarian Steven Okazaki, allows 14 survivors of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to speak about their memories of that day and those that followed the bombing. An estimated 70,000 people, nearly all civilians, were killed within a short period of time, many of them also instantly vaporized. ![]() Three days later on August 9, US bombers dropped a second, 21-kiloton atomic bomb, codenamed “Fat Man,” onto the city of Nagasaki. It was the world’s very first encounter with nuclear weapons. ![]() Everything at or near the hypocenter of the bomb was instantly vaporized. An estimated 140,000 people, out of a population of nearly 300,000, were killed immediately or shortly afterward. on a clear and sunny morning, the US B-29 bomber the Enola Gay dropped a 15-kiloton atomic bomb, codenamed “Little Boy,” over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The recent HBO documentary White Light, Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki examines the events surrounding the dropping of the bomb and provides rare and powerful first-hand accounts from a group of Japanese survivors. In August 1945, in an act that will forever haunt the memory of humankind, the United States government under President Harry Truman ordered the dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, incinerating some 120,000 people instantly and leading to the slow and painful deaths of hundreds of thousands more in the weeks, months and years to follow. White Light, Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, written and directed by Steven Okazaki
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