Hiroshima

The film opens in a classroom: a teacher is trying to explain the bomb to students who remember what happened eight years ago. Then it goes back to the morning of 6 August 1945. Children in lessons, teachers looking for their school, the injured waiting for help along the river. After that the years pass, and the health of the survivors fails, they cannot find work, they hide the fact that they are ill. Hideo Sekigawa's film was commissioned by the Japan Teachers Union and rests on the accounts by children collected by Arata Osada. Close to ninety thousand people from Hiroshima appeared as extras in the mass scenes, among them survivors of the bomb. The major studios found the film too anti-American and refused to distribute it; it was shown instead in schools and community halls.