Sixty years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Editor & Publisher releases an extensive account of the U.S. government's cover-up of Japanese and U.S. military film footage of the Hiroshima bombing's aftermath. Some of the footage will air on television for the first time Saturday night (on the paid-sub Sundance Channel).
In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan almost 60 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited. The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. (…)
Six weeks ago, E&P broke the story that articles written by famed Chicago Daily News war correspondent George Weller about the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki were finally published, in Japan, almost six decades after they had been spiked by U.S. officials. This drew national attention, but suppressing film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was even more significant, as this country rushed into the nuclear age with its citizens having neither a true understanding of the effects of the bomb on human beings, nor why the atomic attacks drew condemnation around the world. (…)
The color U.S. military footage would remain hidden until the early 1980s, and has never been fully aired. It rests today at the National Archives in College Park, Md., in the form of 90,000 feet of raw footage labeled #342 USAF.
Link to Editor and Publisher story.
Portions of the previously hidden footage were used to create the documentary film Original Child Bomb, directed by Carey Schonegevel. Screenshot from trailer, above.
The movie's television premiere takes place on the Sundance Channel tonight, with two other films related to nuclear technology, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the first nuclear bombings. Airtimes according to the Sundance Channel website:
Saturday at 8 p.m.
Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.
Aug. 14 at 3:30 p.m.
Aug. 19 at 2 p.m.
Aug. 24 at noon.
I wonder if any of the tens of thousands of feet of raw footage — or the documentary — will end up in free access online, perhaps at Internet Archive (or on Bittorrent) soon? Certainly seems like the kind of information that belongs out there, for the millions of us who don't have access to this paid cable service. (Thanks, sid)
Update: There's some confusion about how much of this footage is "first to air," and this WaPo article has more (along with details about the footage — it sounds incredible).
After the footage was quietly declassified in 1973, bits of it were used for the first time in the seminal 1974 British television history series "The World at War," according to Mark Meader, archive specialist in the motion picture division of the National Archives. Portions showed up in Japanese documentaries, on anniversaries of the bombings and in a 1983 U.S. documentary called "Dark Circle." "Then it would disappear again.
"It gets 'rediscovered' every decade or so," says Meader. "It's on 16-millimeter film, which means it can't really be used at good quality in large-screen motion pictures (…) People hear it's been classified, they don't remember hearing about it and they always think it's never been seen before."
But the bigger story remains: the film was classified for decades; the medium on which it was stored is fragile; and most of us have never seen it.
Link (Thanks, Frank Bell)
Image (AP): A U.S. Army Signal Corps still photo captures the destruction in Hiroshima.
