Books & Films
BOOKS
Hiroshima No Pika 
Toshi Maruki
HarperCollins, 1982
This story is not about the victimization of all Japanese because of the bombing of Hiroshima. It is about what happened to the people of Hiroshima. In her "About This Book" comments in the back, Maruki tells us that this fictional story is based on the story of a survivor who tried to escape the Flash carrying her wounded husband upon her back and leading her child by the hand. But that woman also tells of how when she moved to Hokkaido the people there were not sympathetic or kind about her experiences, telling her she was trying to draw upon their pity. It seems to me that this book is clearly intended primarily for a Japanese audience and is in fact provides the sort of confrontation with the past for which other reviewers have called.
Barefoot Gen, Vol. 1: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima
Kenji Nakazawa
Last Gasp, 2004
The reissue of this classic manga's first volume has impeccable timing. It recounts the bombing of Hiroshima from the perspective of a young boy, Gen, and his family. But the book's themes (the physical and psychological damage ordinary people suffer from war's realities) ring chillingly true today. Gen and his family have long been struggling without much food, money or medicine, but despite hardships, they try to maintain a semblance of normal life. The adults are exhausted and near despair; the children take air raids and starvation more or less in stride. Nakazawa, a Hiroshima survivor, effectively portrays the strain of living in this environment and shows how efforts to stay upbeat in dire circumstances sometimes manifest as manic, irrational humor.
Pika-Don
Adam Johnson & Tom Kealy
Stanford Graphic Novel Project, 2010
Although the actual death tolls remain unknown, the 1945 atomic bomb attacks killed approximately 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki. The survivors suffered from the effects of radiation and many developed diseases such as cancer. Portraying their concerns became our challenge in writing Pika-Don. Nuclear disarmament was a dream held by one man whose story touched our hearts. Pika-Don chronicles Tsutomu Yamaguchi's life; he was a Japanese ship designer who survived the 1945 atomic bombings in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
From Trinity to Trinity
Kyoko Hyashi
Station Hill Press, 2010
Station Hill Press just published Eiko Otake's translation of From Trinity to Trinity, a novella by Kyoko Hayashi, with an extensive introduction by Eiko. Hayashi's story traces an atomic bomb survivor on her trip to the Trinity site in New Mexico where the atomic bomb was first tested. Hayashi, through the voice of a narrator, mourns for the plants and creatures of the southwest landscape that were the first victims of an atomic blast. Her journey takes her into unfamiliar terrain, both past and present, as she not only confronts American attitudes, disconcertingly detached from the suffering of nuclear destruction, but discovers as well a profound kinship with desert plants and animals, the bomb's "first victims."
Otake's theatrical adaptation of From Trinity to Trinity was presented at New York Theatre Workshop as part of Hibakusha Stories programming in May, 2010.
Hiroshima
John Hersey, 1946, revised 1989
On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atom bomb ever dropped on a city. This account of the bombing of Hiroshima is told from the perspective of six survivors.
Almost four decades after the original publication of the book, John Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told. His account of what he discovered about them is now the final chapter of Hiroshima. This book, John Hersey's journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. Told through the memories of survivors, this timeless, powerful and compassionate document has become a classic "that stirs the conscience of humanity"
It is an unforgettably powerful book and highly recommended as a classroom assignment.
World As Lover, World As Self - Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal
Joanna R. Macy
Parallax Press, 2007
A new beginning for the environment must start with a new spiritual outlook. In this book, author Joanna Macy offers concrete suggestions for just that, showing how each of us can change the attitudes that continue to threaten our environment. Using the Buddha's teachings on "Paticca Samuppada," which stresses the interconnectedness of all things in the world and suggests that any one action affects all things, Macy describes how decades of ignoring this principle has resulted in a self-centeredness that has devastated the environment. Humans, Macy implores, must acknowledge and understand their connectedness to their world and begin to move toward a more focused effort to save it.
This book focuses on our interconnectedness with the natural world, the psychology behind our apparent disconnect and how to begin to change it by coming back to our rightful place in nature.
Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World
Macy, Joanna R. and Molly Young Brown
New Society Press, 1998
Many of us feel called to respond to the ecological destruction of our planet, yet we feel overwhelmed, immobilized, and unable to deal realistically with the threats to life on Earth. Noted spiritual and environmental thinkers Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown contend that this crippling response to world crisis is a psychological defense mechanism that has been endemic since the years of the Cold War arms race, when we had to adapt within a single generation to the horrific possibility of nuclear holocaust.
This book is a guidebook filled with interactive group processes that give us ways into the vitality and determination we each possess to take part in the healing of our world.
One Thousand Paper Cranes: The Story of Sadako and the Children's Peace Statue
Takayuki, Ishii
Dell Laurel Leaf Books, 2001
Ten years after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Sadako Sasaki died as a result of the Atomic Bomb Disease. Sadako’s determination to fold one thousand paper cranes, symbolizing her hope for peace and her courageous struggle with her illness inspired her classmates. After her death, they started a national campaign to build the Children’s Peace Statue in memory of Sadako and the many other children who were victims of the bombing of Hiroshima. To this day, in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, the statue of Sadako is beautifully decorated with thousands of paper cranes brought and sent by people around the world.
Medicine And Global Survival: The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
This free PDF is filled with excellent articles such as “Radiation in Medicine and Nuclear Power Plants: The Same But Very Different” and “Children, Teens and the Japan Disaster”.
FILMS
Grave of the Fireflies
Isao Takahata, 2002
Isao Takahata's powerful antiwar film has been praised by critics wherever it has been screened around the world. When their mother is killed in the firebombing of Tokyo near the end of World War II, teenage Seita and his little sister Setsuko are left on their own: their father is away, serving in the Imperial Navy. The two children initially stay with an aunt, but she has little affection for them and resents the time and money they require. The two children set up housekeeping in a cave by a stream, but their meager resources are quickly exhausted, and Seita is reduced to stealing to feed his sister. The strength of "Grave of the Fireflies" lies in Takahata's evenhanded portrayal of the characters. A sympathetic doctor, the greedy aunt, the disinterested cousins all know there is little they can do for Seita and Setsuko. Their resources, like their country's, are already overtaxed: anything they spare endangers their own survival. As in the "Barefoot Gen" films, no mention is made of Japan's role in the war as an aggressor; but the depiction of the needless suffering endured by its victims transcends national and ideological boundaries.
Hiroshima No Pika
Noriaki Tsuchimoto and John Junkerman, 2005
Hiroshima No Pika by Noriaki Tsuchimoto and John Junkerman is an animated film made by Noriaki Tsuchimoto based on the award-winning children’s book by the Japanese artist Toshi Maruki. Through Maruki's heart-rending but beautiful water color illustrations, the film tells the story of a young girl and her family who live through the horrific bombing of Hiroshima. While the horror lies in the reality of the story, the beauty of the film’s articulation creates a sensitive and affecting movie for children and their parents to engage in together. Narrator Susan Sarandon, a longtime supporter of anti-nuclear war campaigns, lends her talent to this historical yet timely story, inspiring children to remember Hiroshima in the hope that it will never be repeated.
The Last Atomic Bomb
Robert Richter & Kathleen Sullivan, 2006
This film, produced by Youth Arts New York’s Kathleen Sullivan, views the nuclear proliferation of today through the devastating yet inspirational life of Nagasaki survivor Sakue Shimohira. Joined by college students, Ms. Shimohira is dedicated to making sure the truth about the last atomic bomb deliberately used on human beings will never be forgotten.
The Ultimate Wish
Robert Richter & Kathleen Sullivan, 2011
Fukushima and Nagasaki. Nuclear disaster areas. Our film ties them together, as their links have become dangerously clearer. Presidents Reagan and Obama share the ultimate wish--abolition of all nuclear weapons--with Sakue Shimohira, age ten and hiding in a Nagasaki shelter when the nuclear bomb dropped on August 9, 1945. She survived and has dedicated her life to making sure that what happened to her will never happen to anyone again.
Into Eternity
Michael Madsen, 2010
Into Eternity' is an exquisite film that shows the unsustainable challenges of storing nuclear waste.
In Finland the world's first permanent repository for high-level radioactive waste is being hewn out of solid rock— a huge system of underground tunnels— that must last through natural disasters, man-made disasters, and to societal changes for 100,000 years.
Captivating, wondrous and extremely frightening, this feature documentary takes viewers on a journey never seen before into the underworld and into the future. Trailer
Children of Hiroshima
Kaneto Shindo, 1952
"Children of Hiroshima" is a perfect movie to show the devastation caused by the Atomic bomb in particular and war in general.
A recent NY Times Review excerpt: "Kaneto Shindo’s Children of Hiroshima was released in Japan in 1952, when the memories of World War II and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still fresh and painful. A sense of immediacy, or working through recent and almost unfathomable trauma, is palpable in the film, much of which was shot in Hiroshima itself.
Mr. Shindo has been overshadowed, at least in the West, by some of his predecessors, peers and successors: filmmakers like Kenzo Mizoguchi, Akira Kurosawa and Shohei Imamura. “Children of Hiroshima” is of interest partly because it is among the first films to address a subject that would preoccupy, both directly and obliquely, so much of postwar Japanese cinema..." Online Store
Hibakusha, Our Life to Live
David Rothhauser, 2010
On August 6, 1945, a great terror was thrust upon the world. David Rothausers's 80 minute documentary, Hibakusha, Our Life to Live, probes the life stories of Japanese, Korean and American survivors of the terror; the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To make this movie, Memory Productions has completed over 90 hours of filming, including interviews with Japanese, Korean and American hibakusha and international youth participating in the 60th Anniversary Peace Ceremonies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
WATCH >>
The American Experience: Radio Bikini
Robert Stone, 1988
Radio Bikini reveals the often-forgotten story of one of the most tragic chapters of the nuclear age. Bikini Atoll was a peaceful tropical island in the Pacific Ocean when it became host to a series of atomic tests conducted by the U. S. in 1946. Though initially thought to be harmless, these tests left Bikini Island uninhabitable for over 40 years and exposed thousands of U. S. Navy sailors to heavy doses of radiation.
Director Robert Stone utilizes rarely seen archival footage, recently declassified government information, and interviews with cancer-ridden survivors to reveal the true human and environmental impact of these devastating tests. Nominated for an Academy Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
White Light, Black Rain
Steven Okazaki
White Light, Black Rain is a remarkable HBO documentary about the Hibakusha by Steven Okazaki. This documentary is an excellent preparatory unit for a school visit. The film’s website features a useful Study Guide.
