In the last year, international conflicts and shifts in security policy have brought the threat of nuclear war back into public view. In “What Japan’s Atom Bomb Survivors Have Taught Us About the Dangers of Nuclear War,” Retro Report examines the profound impact of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only use of atomic weapons in war, through the eyes of people who lived through it.
Our objective was to create an intimate and immersive story that took viewers inside the experiences of the survivors, known in Japan as hibakusha. The few surviving hibakusha, now in their 80s and 90s, were children during the bombings. Their earliest memories are of the attack and the devastation that followed.
Many hibakusha endured lifelong illnesses and faced discrimination; some have lost their own children to cancer and other diseases, unsure whether radiation exposure caused these deaths. Many became activists against the use of nuclear weapons, aware that soon there will be no one left with a first-hand memory of the horror of a nuclear attack.
To tell the story, we spent weeks seeking out survivors in the U.S. and Japan, networking with hibakusha groups and reporting off-the-record with them to assuage their concerns about speaking publicly. We spoke with a dozen survivors willing to talk about their traumatic childhoods, and filmed riveting, emotionally charged interviews with four of them. We also scoured archives at libraries, local news stations and private collections in Japan and the U.S., uncovering rarely seen photos and footage.
Our pacing was intentional to allow viewers to absorb the survivors’ recollections in an unrushed way. The story gives space to silence as the camera lingers on close-ups, and favors long, static shots of the devastation wrought by the bombing.
All these elements together bring survivors’ experiences to life in a distinctive and compelling way that only video can truly do.
