On August 6, 1945, the world was changed forever when American forces dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, another similar bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, and shortly afterward Japan surrendered to the United States. The human cost was tremendous — 210,000 died in the immediate aftermath of the atomic attacks, and another 160,000 would later die of related illnesses and injuries.

While Japan would rebuild itself as an international economic power, the nation’s psyche still carries the scars of those fateful days in 1945, and award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki examines the lingering impact of the first two uses of thermonuclear weapons in the documentary White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In White Light/Black Rain, Okazaki talks with fourteen survivors of the 1945 attacks, ranging from an artist who has recounted his experience in comic art to a woman who was the only child out of 620 students to survive at a Hiroshima elementary school. White Light/Black Rain also features interviews with Americans involved in the attacks and probes their feelings about the use of the bombs sixty years later. White Light/Black Rain was an official selection at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. (Barnes & Noble)

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Through the powerful recollections of atomic bomb survivors, White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an extraordinary new film by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki, presents a deeply moving look at the painful legacy of the first — and hopefully last — uses of thermonuclear weapons in war.

Featuring interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors - many who have never spoken publicly before - and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, White Light/Black Rain provides a detailed exploration of the bombings and their aftermath. In a succession of riveting personal accounts, the film reveals both unimaginable suffering and extraordinary human resilience.

If anyone ever says to you, “ah, just drop a nuke on them.” Or, if any policy maker ever says, “What we need are tactical nuclear weapons”, then they haven’t seen nor understand the real horrors not of being killed, but surviving an atomic blast. Instantaneous disintegration is the easy part of this discussion. This is a movie from the survivors point of view that should be shown to all Americans, especially anyone who thinks nuclear war is a game to be won. The effects of these bombs in August, 1945 are still with the survivors today.

I never stopped to think what life must be like with your skin burned off, or the side of your face sheered away, or skin dangling like string from your body. You may not be able to watch this documentary all the way through as you see U. S. Army footage of the actual horrors of these blasts, but when you return to the TV after having cried, you will leave with a deep understanding that nuclear weapons are one of the scientific advances the human race should never use again. (Amazon)