Children of Hiroshima

Takako was born in Hiroshima and teaches at a school on an island after the bomb. During the summer holiday she returns to the city for the first time in years. Her parents and her sister died that day. She goes looking for the children she taught at the kindergarten. Most of the ones she finds are ill, most are orphans. There is also Iwakichi, who worked for her family; he has gone blind, is begging in the street, and will not give up his grandson to an orphanage. At every door Takako sees another life and is enough for none of them. Kaneto Shindo directs; ninety-seven minutes, with Nobuko Otowa as Takako. The film was commissioned by the Japan Teachers Union, which then refused to stand behind it, finding it too sentimental and not political enough; a year later the union had Hideo Sekigawa make Hiroshima instead.