[HN Gopher] 1953 'Phantom' A-bomb film 'Hiroshima,' with 88,000 ... ___________________________________________________________________ 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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-29 23:00 UTC)