[HN Gopher] 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 ...
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1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 extras,
screening in Tokyo
Author : pologreen
Score : 108 points
Date : 2023-07-29 19:20 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mainichi.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (mainichi.jp)
| durkie wrote:
| 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
| throw0101a wrote:
| 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)
| koheripbal wrote:
| 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.
| ransackdev wrote:
| 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)
| jorgesborges wrote:
| It's still true to say the movie lacked a cohesive story --
| it may have been "about the man" but it was an incoherent
| battery of spoken facts rather than a personal journey with
| growth and progression.
| randallsquared wrote:
| Would you prefer that we only get biopics about people
| who have storybook personal growth or would you prefer
| that more of the biopics we get are fictionalized? 'Cause
| that's the choice we have, if we act on your complaint.
|
| People tell stories. They are not themselves stories.
| Most people, even really important, impactful people,
| were just doing something interesting, or putting one
| foot in front of another, or pursuing short-term goals.
| squarepizza wrote:
| At some point I just closed my eyes and pretended I was
| listening to a radio drama, which is what it could've /
| should've been.
| justinclift wrote:
| 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.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. For me this is one
| of the best pieces of reporting I've ever read.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| 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.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| asynchronous wrote:
| Grave of the Fireflies is about the Tokoyo firebombing
| raids btw.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| *Kobe, not Tokyo. FWIW.
| lostlogin wrote:
| That should be required reading for everyone everywhere.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230130070028/https://www.newyo...
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| " 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.
| zer8k wrote:
| 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.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| "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.
| Knee_Pain wrote:
| Euphemism means using softer words. Getting shellshock from
| a machine gun is not an euphemism
| mcpackieh wrote:
| The context of this conversation is people who were
| traumatized by an atomic bomb. I think atomic bomb to
| artillery qualifies as such a softening.
| Knee_Pain wrote:
| And Post Traumatic STRESS Disorder isn't?
|
| You got an atomic bomb dropped on you, experienced a
| literal apocalyptic sun consuming everything you loved
| first hand and all you (impersonal) can come up with is
| "stress"?
|
| If you want to stay coherent then we should have made up
| a term specifically to tackle the world-ending
| experiences these people lived through.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Having known a few people with (war-induced) PTSD, I
| think stress disorder is a good description of their
| outward symptoms. However I think your perspective is
| valid and can see why you think this sounds diminishing.
| zer8k wrote:
| Regardless, PTSD is a terrible term because it's non-
| descriptive. It also makes it more difficult for a person
| to be empathetic to a sufferer of PTSD because it's not an
| on/off switch and more of a spectrum. A term like "shell
| shock" illustrates the actual trauma and enables people to
| be understand better why a person might act the way they
| do. It is often easier for a person with PTSD to describe
| themselves as a "victim of X" or "experienced Y" because
| the term is so disconnected from actual meaning. It belongs
| in medical textbooks, certainly, but in spoken language
| it's worthless. A perfect example of jargon.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Personally I think "post traumatic stress disorder" is
| more descriptive and accurate than "shell shock". The
| person isn't shocked, they're traumatized. Also it turns
| out different things can make sense to people in
| different ways. Probably the term is less important than
| the understanding.
| randallsquared wrote:
| > _The person isn't shocked, they're traumatized._
|
| The terms "in shock" and "shocked" are not equivalent.
| The former means traumatized, while the latter means
| someone is extremely surprised.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That doesn't really make sense. A victim of x doesn't
| necessarily get PTSD from that. PTSD describes a specific
| set of symptoms that _can_ occur after experiencing a
| traumatic experience.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Shell shock is just the outdated term for what we now
| recognize as combat-induced PTSD. Before that it was deemed
| cowardice or malingering.
| wheels wrote:
| George Carlin's take on the words:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0
| mach1ne wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| Shellshock => Battle Fatigue => Operational Exhaustion => Post
| Traumatic Stress Disorder
|
| https://www.thoughtco.com/soft-language-euphemism-1692111
| Baeocystin wrote:
| 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.
| gre wrote:
| "The bomb didnt beat Japan, Stalin did"
|
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...
| pengaru wrote:
| > 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
| gre wrote:
| 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?
| pengaru wrote:
| > Crimes all around. War is bad, actually?
|
| I'm not sure why this is in response to my comment, which
| speaks nothing of war crimes nor has anything resembling an
| accusatory tone, nor does it excuse Japan as innocent.
|
| The excerpt in my comment was transcribed and posted
| because it speaks to the Soviet Union's entering the war
| in-context, relative to the atomic bombings, from a
| Japanese perspective.
| gre wrote:
| Good point. I thought you were emphasizing the labor camp
| aspect of it.
| thegaulofthem wrote:
| 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.
| gre wrote:
| What did the Japanese council say? Link me asomething to
| read!
|
| Also, what do you mean by "a site like this?" Lmao
| Etheryte wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| andai wrote:
| 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
| Vecr wrote:
| 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.
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| gre wrote:
| 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.
| jrflowers wrote:
| 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
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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)
| wiseowise wrote:
| This is what Oppenheimer should've been about.
|
| Not
|
| SPOILERS
|
| Mediocre politics, sex, boredom biopic.
| nonrepeating wrote:
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> 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.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > 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.
| spacephysics wrote:
| 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_Pain wrote:
| A movie about Oppenheimer's life should be about... the
| immediate fallout of the bomb on the Japanese population?
| wiseowise wrote:
| 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
| mcpackieh wrote:
| I think his role in that overshadows the rest of his life.
| Knee_Pain wrote:
| I think he was a human with a rich multi-faceted life and
| this line of reasoning is exactly how we arrive in 2023
| with people who, for instance, don't know about Columbus'
| genocides because "discovering America overshadowed the
| rest of his life so we didn't bother to cover it in
| school".
|
| Yeah, no.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Better for a Columbus movie to focus on the genocides
| than his sex life, no?
| solumunus wrote:
| [flagged]
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Good point, was it understood in the US as anarchism at the
| time, though?
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| 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.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| As the saying goes, if everyone is part of the state,
| nobody is part of the state. At some scale, human
| organizations start to break down.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Also on Criterion Collection / Channel -
| https://www.criterionchannel.com/the-day-after-trinity/video...
| cubefox wrote:
| 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-...
| darkclouds wrote:
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> 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
| darkclouds wrote:
| I know, but its never really taught how much more
| complicated the situation is that leads to the start of a
| war. At best it documents events, but history at least in
| my case never went into the politics. History was more a
| case of just remembering facts, but teaching might have
| changed a bit since my time.
|
| One example of some of the stuff I heard the imperialist
| forces were up to in Japan, again I dont know how much is
| true or not, I wasnt there, but I do also read conspiracy
| theories to broaden my horizons.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamashita%27s_gold
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Japanese_Army_during
| _...
| nerdponx wrote:
| 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
| 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 wrote:
| > 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?
| networkchad wrote:
| [dead]
| cubefox wrote:
| 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.)
| geon wrote:
| 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
| npunt wrote:
| On youtube (paid): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L8YIS2DCVU
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