The survivors of the nuclear bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known as “hibakusha”. Atomic People marries interviews with a handful of them – all octogenarians at least, most in their 90s, a few who have marked their centenaries – with contemporary footage of President Harry Truman lauding the Manhattan Project’s achievement and the burnt and blistered bodies in the streets of the Japanese cities to create a deeply moving, quietly devastating film.
Survivors were told, from the off, not to speak of their experiences. First, by the occupying allied forces who moved in after Japan surrendered in the face of this new weapon and banned reporting on the bombs’ effects. Later, by their friends, families and wider culture as survival became stigmatised. The hibakusha’s blood was thought to be tainted, as exposure to radiation took its toll on survivors and on many of their subsequent children, who were born disfigured or were miscarried before they could be born at all. No one wanted them to marry into their families.
