1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230729/p2a/00m/0et/006000c

by pologreen • 3 years ago

151 117 3 years ago

durkie• 3 years ago

In light of the release of Oppenheimer, people have been talking about, basically, the other side of the development of atomic weapons.

John Hersey's "Hiroshima" article from the August 23, 1946 edition of the New Yorker came up as the definitive piece on the immediate impact of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, and it is a gripping read: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima

Baeocystin4• 3 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230130070028/https://www.newyo...

koheripbal• 3 years ago

Yes, although they touched on the impact of the bomb on Japanese civilians a little, they didn't really do it justice, and it's a shame because I think it would have really provided an important insight on why Oppenheimer's views changed over time.

The movie lacked a cohesive story anyway, so that would have added some meaning.

ransackdev2• 3 years ago

The movie was about the man, not the bomb, which is why it focused primarily on a man, and not a bomb. The actual testing of the bomb was a small part of the movie and the real deployments of it were but a couple sentences. The movie Oppenheimer was never a movie about Hiroshima and while I think there needs to be more coverage in general about our impact on Japan by dropping those bombs, I think giving the movie Oppenheimer shit about it isn't reasonable just because the man worked on it. It covered everything from the his view point, and what he personally lived. He read about the bombs being used the same as everyone else, and it wouldn't have fit the movie to suddenly jump to Japan to show the impact of his work. It did however try to visualize the impact and eventual realization of what he had played a part in, in the visuals at the compound when he's giving the speech to the fanatical coworkers stomping their feet (which was very Aronofsky like imo)

justinclift• 3 years ago

Ugh. Clearly the author was paid by the word.

That's painfully super stretched out writing. :(

Couldn't even make it a 10th of the way through that without losing all interest and moving on.

seizethecheese2• 3 years ago

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. For me this is one of the best pieces of reporting I’ve ever read.

Baeocystin4• 3 years ago

I've certainly read pieces that were padded and tedious.

This one genuinely, truly is not. Take the first section: every vignette is tightly constructed; you get a sense of the person, the zeitgeist of fear they were living in, and the arbitrary moment that made All The Difference. This structure is repeated point-by-point for each of the survivors, deliberately, to hammer home each element.

Part II has its own structure, emphasizing the chaos. Each part flows well from one to the next. The entire article is an excellent example of writing. It's clear that the author himself is grappling with what to feel about it all. It's powerful stuff.

numpad02• 3 years ago

This is news writing in non-English plus translation. Translated text is always off-putting, especially beyond same language groups. I found the link to the original if anyone needs it, by the way.

1: https://mainichi.jp/articles/20230728/k00/00m/040/198000c

seizethecheese2• 3 years ago

I’ve read this a few times and every time I’m left gobsmacked for at least a day. I recommend everyone read it.

evrimoztamur• 3 years ago

That was a hard read. I also recommend Barefoot Gen, the comic series, by Keiji Nakazawa. The depth of the visuals added a lot to my understanding and empathy.

veonik• 3 years ago

Barefoot Gen was also adapted as an anime movie and it's... rough. Another heart-wrenching anime related to the bombings is Grave of the Fireflies.

ThrowawayR22• 3 years ago

Post-war Japan has had some really good marketing. You'll never see films or comics depicting Nazi Germany under Allied bombing and the suffering of those on the homefront loyal to the Third Reich; anybody who who tried to create a "Barfuß Jens" or "Das Grab der Glühwürmchen" would be torn to shreds for being pro-fascist and few would consume anything so tasteless.

Yet ordinary Japanese people conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army committed the equivalent of the Holocaust across Asia, widespread atrocities terrible enough to revolt even Nazi observers. It's not like they would have treated Westerners any better either; look at what they did to Allied POWs. But whitewashing with articles and films, not even that many really, and today Westerners are expressing "understanding and empathy" to the wartime Japanese, loyal to their country and divine Emperor, receiving the consequences of a war they themselves started.

Understanding and empathy are good but let's not be uncritical about what their purpose is or unaware of the larger historical context.

throw0101a• 3 years ago

The word "article" is used loosely, as it was later published as a (31,000-word, 160p) book:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_(book)

lostlogin• 3 years ago

That should be required reading for everyone everywhere.

TedDoesntTalk• 3 years ago

“ The story portrays the chaos in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.' Aug. 6, 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, with some 88,000 residents, many of them survivors, performing as extras.”

I wonder in how many induced PTSD. That term did not exist in the 1950s and maybe was not understood or at least appreciated.

zer8k2• 3 years ago

It's been around a lot longer. We've called it Shell Shock, War Neurosis, Battle Fatigue and several other things. It's well documented. PTSD, imo, is just another layer of indirection when referring to trauma. It's name provides significantly less meaning than something like "shell shock" which gets right to the point of the matter. PTSD was certainly appreciated. Patton famously got a reaming from Eisenhower for how he treated shell shocked troops during the war.

mcpackieh5• 3 years ago

"Shell shock" becomes a euphemism when you're talking about people traumatized by something other than artillery. PTSD is more general, and therefore more precise in the general case.

wheels• 3 years ago

George Carlin's take on the words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0

mach1ne• 3 years ago

PTSD is more than a layer of indirection, it’s a bed for the current direction of research focused on trauma. Shell shock isn’t a good term for home abuse for example, but the current dogma is that similar neurological mechanisms underly these different kinds of trauma, thus joining them all under the term PTSD.

The benefit of this umbrella term is, or course, contingent on there actually existing such a universal neurological pattern of PTSD, which I don’t think can yet be decisively established.

jacquesm• 3 years ago

Shellshock => Battle Fatigue => Operational Exhaustion => Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

https://www.thoughtco.com/soft-language-euphemism-1692111

Baeocystin4• 3 years ago

I'm willing to bet it helped people come to terms with what happened more than it made things worse. Recontextualizing traumatic events in to a form you have control over is a powerful tool.

wiseowise3• 3 years ago

This is what Oppenheimer should’ve been about.

Not

SPOILERS

Mediocre politics, sex, boredom biopic.

spacephysics• 3 years ago

The movie was based off a book, which was about Oppenheimer hence the title.

I thought it was amazing, sure some parts were a bit long.

Makes sense if the movie Hiroshima is more focused on Hiroshima than Oppenheimer.

Knee_Pain4• 3 years ago

A movie about Oppenheimer's life should be about... the immediate fallout of the bomb on the Japanese population?

mcpackieh5• 3 years ago

I think his role in that overshadows the rest of his life.

wiseowise3• 3 years ago

A movie about Oppenheimer should’ve at least shown what haunted him and weight of his decisions, not one minute (!) of Oppenheimer watching some background video showing surprised face like on this video.

https://youtu.be/6pc0u-iqIDw

wahnfrieden2• 3 years ago

I disliked the anarchism erasure of portraying the Spanish civil war as a "communist party" cause (the authoritarian vanguardist type of communism that the movie focused on)

vouwfietsman• 3 years ago

Good point, was it understood in the US as anarchism at the time, though?

throwawaymaths2• 3 years ago

Communism is an anarchist philosophy, at it's root. If it seems a bit weird because (IIRC) this historical dialectic goes:

- bourgeois revolution

- Workers revolution

- Bigger state

- Even bigger state

- Underpants gnomes

- Anarchist utopia

Only half joking... this is what turn of the last century communists believed.

FirmwareBurner2• 3 years ago

This is what Oppenheimer should’ve been about

The movie called "Oppenheimer" is mainly about Oppenheimer (shocking, right?), it's not about "the bomb", otherwise it would have been called "Trinity" or "Manhattan" or something.

If you want to see a movie about "the bomb" don't watch Oppenheimer.

wiseowise3• 3 years ago

During World War II, Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. appoints physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer and a team of scientists spend years developing and designing the atomic bomb. Their work comes to fruition on July 16, 1945, as they witness the world's first nuclear explosion, forever changing the course of history.

Literally from the description of the movie.

It promised work of Oppenheimer and team of scientists working on the Manhattan project. Instead it’s a shitty avengers rip off where Oppenheimer assembles team of scientists without any substance and literally no focus on Manhattan project.

I expected to see at least the Imitation Game level movie, not subpar plot focused on sex and politics.

nonrepeating• 3 years ago

The film was fascinating, quite nuanced, and beautifully shot. It’s about people, their relationships, and the evolution of their worldviews much more than it was about a detonation.

gre5• 3 years ago

"The bomb didnt beat Japan, Stalin did"

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...

thegaulofthem• 3 years ago

That garbage piece of writing completely ignores nearly 80 years of conventional history which includes first-hand account from the very Japanese council cited in the story.

Absolute joke content that doesn’t belong on a site like this.

gre5• 3 years ago

What did the Japanese council say? Link me something to read!

Also, what do you mean by "a site like this?" Lmao

Etheryte• 3 years ago

Would you mind pointing out what exactly is wrong in the article? Right now it isn't very clear what you take issue with. Most of what I've read about the surrender of Japan puts a lot of emphasis on the Soviet invasion, not only on the bombings, so I would be interested to know what you mean.

zeroCalories• 3 years ago

The article is from a respected foreign policy site, and makes a case that is well accepted by historians. You can say that the bombs were still justified(which I believe), but the attitude in these comments are borderline insane. Makes you think americans can't handle a little criticism without losing their mind.

andai• 3 years ago

Fascinating article. Website is awful though. Here's the article without auto-playing video, missing ads, page crashing, and paragraphs of text randomly jumping around the page: https://archive.ph/HkeMn

pengaru2• 3 years ago

  >     Many Japanese soldiers were soon on their way home from their bases
  > around Japan and were beginning to crowd the trains and buses.  It was
  > difficult for some of them to understand the surrender.  Although most of
  > the Japanese army in the field was still unbeaten, it was stretched thin
  > all across Asia.  The string of horrendous losses at Leyte, Iwo Jima,
  > Saipan, and Okinawa and America's superior air power against the home
  > islands and the use of atomic weapons were evidence enough that the war
  > could not be won.  And then, of course, when the Soviet Union entered the
  > war against Japan after the Hiroshima bomb, there was great fear that our
  > old hypothetical enemy would take advantage of our weakened condition and
  > try to occupy us.  The Soviets seized the southern half of Sakhalin island
  > and four islands just north of Hokkaido - the closest one is in sight of
  > the Japanese mainland - and they still hold them today.  The United States
  > returned Okinawa, which they seized in 1945, to Japanese sovereignty in
  > 1972.
  >
  >     In 1945 the Russians stormed into Manchuria - our buffer against them
  > for so many years - when our forces were relatively small and weakened,
  > unable to defend against massive Russian armor.  There was chaos as
  > Japanese civilians and soldiers tried to escape from the Russians, but in
  > the end about five hundred thousand Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner
  > and sent to labor camps in Siberia and other places in the Soviet Union.
  > Some of them remained prisoners and virtual slave laborers for as long as
  > twelve years.
  >  ...
  > There are those who say to this day that the emperor's decision to
  > surrender was brought about almost as much by the fear of the Soviets - the
  > fear that they might invade the home islands or partition the country, as
  > had been done to Germany - as by the horrible events at Hiroshima and
  > Nagasaki.
  >
  > - MADE IN JAPAN AKIO MORITA and SONY (c) 1986  (any typos are mine)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1008101.Made_in_Japan

gre5• 3 years ago

According to British historian Mark Felton:

"The Japanese murdered 30 million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23 million of these were ethnic Chinese. It is a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#:~:text=....

Crimes all around. War is bad, actually?

nradov• 3 years ago

Even if the Soviet Union had remained neutral, Japan would have certainly surrendered within a few more months after some more atomic bombs. No nation could possibly sustain a war effort while losing a major city every few weeks.

gre5• 3 years ago

The article argues more than 50% of 66 cities were already destroyed by conventional bombs, and then we dropped the nukes. A full bombing run of 500 planes could equal about a quarter of a nuke, but with better targeting. According to the article.

Vecr• 3 years ago

I think using the bombs with the information the US had at the time was justified. From the information the US had, Japan had a quite credible claim that they would "never" surrender unconditionally, though lots of Japanese people and military units would surrender even if Japan itself officially did not, making it not literally "never". With nuclear bombs the US could have kept hitting them with increasing levels of force, probably not possible with conventional bombs. If the war had continued until 1950 most of inhabited Japan would have been destroyed, and the US would have won even without a single surrender.

msla• 3 years ago

It's incorrect, in that the Japanese didn't offer surrender until after the nuclear bombs.

foogazi• 3 years ago

This article sounds laughably insane to me, not a historian but hear me out anyway

Japan wanted to surrender:

“But, in 1965, historian Gar Alperovitz argued that, although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. 1.”

Or maybe not ? Which is it ?

“Japan’s leaders had not seriously considered surrendering prior to that day.”

Japan’s leaders were worried about the divinity of the Emperor. Insane to believe these people inhabited the 20th century at the same time the Nuclear bomb was developed:

“What if they decided to put the emperor—who was believed to be divine—on trial? What if they got rid of the emperor and changed the form of government entirely?”

They had their own nuclear program:

Third, the Japanese military understood, at least in a rough way, what nuclear weapons were. Japan had a nuclear weapons program.

The US (not Stalin) was having their way with Japan through the summer of 1945:

In the summer of 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force carried out one of the most intense campaigns of city destruction in the history of the world. Sixty-eight cities in Japan were attacked and all of them were either partially or completely destroyed.

Japan’s junta didn’t care about it’s citizens:

Japan’s leaders consistently displayed disinterest in the city bombing that was wrecking their cities.

They should have been Mussolini’d along with the Emperor

AKA the find out stage:

The Japanese were in a relatively difficult strategic situation. They were nearing the end of a war they were losing. Conditions were bad.

No shit sherlock - they couldn’t even project power beyond their island

But, they had two plans! How had the other plans been going so far ? Doesn’t matter:

You know shot is bad when you have two plans to surrender:

They had two plans for getting better surrender terms; they had, in other words, two strategic options. The first was diplomatic. Japan had signed a five-year neutrality pact with the Soviets in April of 1941, which would expire in 1946. A group consisting mostly of civilian leaders and led by Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori hoped that Stalin…

OME You must have been truly desperate to come to Stalin for help in 1945

The second plan was military.. They hoped to use Imperial Army ground troops to inflict high casualties on U.S. forces when they invaded.

Hope is not a strategy

It didn’t take a military genius to see that, while it might be possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions.

Hmm where had we seen this before

Japanese intelligence was predicting that U.S. forces might not invade for months.

Did they predict that they would lose their Navy and have two atomic bombs dropped on their home land ?

Anyways, we are supposed to believe that based on this timeline,

Aug 6 - Hiroshima Aug 8 - Stalin invades China Aug 9 - Nagasaki Aug 11 - Hirohito surrenders

after getting blown to pieces on their own home islands, with no Navy, Stalin invading China was somehow the final straw.

boomboomsubban2• 3 years ago

I'm sure the title was truncated for length, but missing "screening in Tokyo" gives a very different impression of what the story is about.

I thought some new film was being made by Hollywood with 88,000 extras filming a scene tomorrow.

dang• 3 years ago

Ok, I've attempted to make it clearer

(submitted title was "'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, set for July 30" and yes HN's title limit is 80 chars so the full title wouldn't fit)

semi-extrinsic• 3 years ago

There is also an excellent documentary called The Day After Trinity. It is IMO well balanced and has interviews with a lot of the physicists who actually worked with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, and a few who went to Japan after the blasts to document the aftermath.

It is on the Archive: https://archive.org/details/thedayaftertrinity/thedayaftertr...

Also worth mentioning is the BBC podcast The Bomb:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08llv8n/episodes/downloads

barrenko• 3 years ago

Also on Criterion Collection / Channel - https://www.criterionchannel.com/the-day-after-trinity/video...

npunt• 3 years ago

On youtube (paid): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L8YIS2DCVU

jrflowers• 3 years ago

If anyone is interested in a documentary about the survivors of the atom bombs, I cannot recommend White Light/Black Rain strong enough. I believe it is streaming on HBO or whatever in the US.

It goes without saying that it is very graphic and not for the faint hearted.

Edit: here it is on YouTube

https://youtube.com/watch?v=C3ARusnC37o

cubefox2• 3 years ago

According to a 2015 survey[1], 56% of US Americans say the bombings were justified, while 34% say they were not. This relatively positive (or non-negative) assessment of the A-bombs might have influenced their portrayal in "Oppenheimer", an American production. The Japanese re-screening of "Hiroshima" might be aimed at countering their depiction in "Oppenheimer".

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/08/04/70-years-...

nerdponx• 3 years ago

Americans are often taught that the bombings resulted in less loss of life than a conventional land invasion of the home islands. So it's not quite a matter of "A-bomb good". Plenty of Americans alive today lived through the Cold War too, and spent years or decades in low-level fear of nuclear war. It's not quite as simple as "nukes good therefore no criticism of nukes in movie". Part of the interest in things like the Manhattan Project is the grim context of what happened next, and of the alluring eeriness of radiation and nuclear weapons in general.

judge2020• 3 years ago

Americans are often taught that the bombings resulted in less loss of life than a conventional land invasion of the home islands.

Or, at least, less loss of American life. If The United Kingdom had not consented to the bombs and they were shelved, what are the chances the U.S. would've lost e.g. 50,000 and Japan 150,000 before surrender?

cubefox2• 3 years ago

Yes, but the American views about specifically Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem different from most other countries, or at least from Japan. Outside the US it is quite common to view the bombings as war crimes, while this is uncommon in the US. This probably influenced how "Oppenheimer" handled the matter.

(A comparison would perhaps be the difference between a Russian and a Polish film about the Sowjet invasion of Poland. The history here is viewed very differently in the Russian/Polish public.)

darkclouds5• 3 years ago

This is why history is selectively taught at schools. Here in the UK we werent taught anything about Hiroshima but whilst its portrayed as shortening the war, thats using an argument which is hard to prove.

It also means that once that step is taken, ie dropping the bomb, there is no going back, the US will have to remain the dominant power for the foreseeable future in order to prevent retaliation. This then underminds the US rhetoric and western/nato rhetoric when looking at developing countries and countries improving like we see with Russia and China and Chinese desires to bring Taiwan under their fold.

Last century, mid 80's I remember a conversation on what subjects to study for UK GCSE's. If we had to take a language, most could only study French, those in the top also studied German and could take that as an language exam subject.

This person same age, ie teenage said they were going to study Mandarin, and I asked why. Well his father worked in the City of London and they could see back in the mid 80's China was going to over take everything economically in the next few decades. Fast forward to now and thats what you are seeing along with the European bloc aka the EU being formed.

So it looks like economics is being used to drive the creation of trading blocks and these economic blocs appear to drive political blocs, but the local media spin things to divert peoples attention away from whats really going on.

Anyway this Hiroshima film is likely to placate the Japanese elders and remind them they are not forgotten as are the events that took place.

Me personally I detest violence, and I couldnt think of a worse job than being told to go kill someone based on someone elses orders, no matter how it is spun. I've heard about some of the things that went on in Japan, I dont know how true they are, like all of history I take it with a pinch of salt because of the saying, the victor writes the history books, but even now I cant believe so many people were willing to go fight for a side, its just an out and out bad situation whatever side you are on.

FirmwareBurner2• 3 years ago

because of the saying, the victor writes the history books,

Yeah, in all my history books, the bad guys always lost and the good guys always won 100% of the time. What are the odds of that? /s

WalterBright• 3 years ago

I cant believe so many people were willing to go fight for a side

The price of freedom is always blood.

Don't take your freedoms as a given - many have died for them.

thoi2u4pl4k234• 3 years ago

... and the British (and everyone in the 'enlightened West') are taught that savage destruction of Asia (incl. India/China) by European powers was for their own benefit and that they ought to be grateful for having had their ancestors murdered, subject to famine, and sometimes outright genocide (not to mention having their cultures completely destroyed to the point of total alienation).

They even do this with the so-called 'enlightened Islamic invaders' in India. The West has pathological hatred for the 'inferior pagans' and it shows very clearly; and indeed there's very clear evidence for this in white-supremacist fields like Indology[1], where half their time is spent bad-mouthing India, and the other half appropriating her.

[1]. The Nay Science - A history of German Indology (OUP).

Steve442• 3 years ago

I'm British and don't recognise most of your points.

geon2• 3 years ago

Can someone parse the title for me?

I feel like there might be a couple of garden paths in there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

TaylorAlexander3• 3 years ago

"1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo" > The 1953 movie "Hiroshima", about the atom bomb, will be screening in Tokyo. The movie had 88,000 extras. (The word 'Phantom' is confusing. According the article, the movie is called a "phantom" movie because it was produced in Japan but was not released in Japan due to a dispute between the publisher and the filmmakers.)

numpad02• 3 years ago

For context: "the phantom of ___(幻の___)" is a common clickbait phrase in Japanese media, used in similar manners to "legendary", "forbidden" or "hidden" in English. I would guess "A Forgotten 1953 Film 'Hiroshima'" would be a less accurate but more understandable translation.

geon2• 3 years ago

Thank you!

nirav72• 3 years ago

I'm imagining that coordinating 88,000 extras for the shoot had to be challenging.

cameldrv• 3 years ago

Frankly, for all of the hand wringing over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it pales in comparison to Japanese atrocities in China and many other places.

In stark contrast to Germany where every school kid learns about the millions killed in the Holocaust, the rape of Nanking and many, many more atrocities by Imperial Japan are routinely denied altogether in Japan.

When it comes to the U.S., I can say that I certainly learned about the bombings, it was presented as extremely morally ambiguous, our class held a debate over it, and I was shown pictures of atomic bomb victims in the textbooks I was given.

1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras, screening in Tokyo

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