Movie #90 - White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I watched this film back when my wife and I first got TMN. This is one of those powerful, historical documentaries that you are not watching to be entertained, but to be informed of how tragic our recent past has been and how much influence it still has for people of today.

The title says it all, but this movie is more than that. It is a full documentation of the remaining survivors of the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of the Second World War. Some of the scenes and descriptions are quite graphic, but this is real life - which is what makes it powerful than anything a Steven Spielberg or Clint Eastwood could conjure up to depict WWII.

Director Steven Okazaki should be commended for telling a story that many people have since forgotten. Generations have come and gone since the tragic bombings of Japan and many of the country's own citizens have already forgotten what these victims had to go through just over 60 years ago. This notion was captured by Okazaki after interviewing a number of teenagers and twenty-somethings in the streets of both Tokyo and Hiroshima during the 60th anniversary of the bombing. Only a handful of young people interviewed actually knew the significance of the day in question - which was both heart-wrenching and not surprising at the same time.

Without getting too preachy, many young people of our generation have forgotten the many sacrifices that previous generations did to provide for a better world for the first world countries. This includes a number of issues, not just tragedies linked to war or oppression. Its good to see that movies like this exist to wake up people like me to realize how lucky we truly are. Hopefully, more people will have the chance to see documentaries like this one to know what really happened through a first hand account of the events.

I highly recommend this film. Its definitely not for the faint at heart, but one that I believe most people my age should watch. History is sometimes retold with a great deal of bias (e.g. old World at War documentaries produced by the BBC in the 70's), however, this first-person account really shows what truly happened - all biased removed.