Ten Thousand Things
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Steven Okazaki's WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN airs on HBO in North America August 6



"I've shown you my wounds, because I want you to know this can't happen again."
–Sumiteru Taniguchi, burned in the Nagasaki bombing when he was 16-years-old

We're living in a rapidly closing window in time while we can still listen to and record the stories of the remaining survivors of the Second World War.  Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki has captured some of the stories of the survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan in two consecutive films, 2005's The Mushroom Club and this year's White Light/Black Rain.

The filmmaker notes that few people, even inside Japan, seem to know much about what the details of happened on August 7 and August 9, 1945, and in the traumatic aftermath that continues even now.   He emphatically reminds us that with "enough nuclear weapons to equal 400,000 Hiroshimas, we cannot afford to forget what happened on those two days in 1945."

WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN is showing in Japanese four times daily at Iwanami Hall in Tokyo and five times daily at Theatre Umeda in Osaka. It screens in English at Iwanami Hall on Aug. 12 and Aug. 26, 6:50 p.m., (10F Iwanami Jimbo-cho Bldg., 2-1 Kanda Jimbo-cho, Chiyoda-ku). Tickets: ¥1,800. For more information, call the theater on (03) 3262-5252. WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN premiered on HBO on August 6, and rebroadcasts throughout August. Its website has a preview, slideshow of paintings depicting the aftermaths of the bombing by survivors featured in the film, an interview with Okazaki, and biographies of hibakusha and Americans involved with creating and deploying the bombs, featured in the film:

"Debuting on the 62nd anniversary of the bombings, WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN provides a graphic, unflinching look at the reality of nuclear warfare through first-hand accounts of both survivors and American men who carried out the bombing missions.

"'With WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN, I wanted to tell one of the great human stories of one of history's monumental tragedies," notes Okazaki, who met more than 500 survivors and interviewed more than 100 people before choosing the 14 subjects featured in the film. "The personal memories of the survivors are amazing, shocking and inspiring. They put a human face on the incalculable destruction caused by nuclear war."

"In addition to interviews with 14 atomic bomb survivors, many of whom have never spoken publicly before, WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN spotlights four Americans intimately involved in the bombings. Okazaki interweaves rarely seen, intense archival footage and photographs, banned for 25 years after the war, with survivors' paintings and drawings, all of which convey the devastating toll of atomic warfare in human terms.

"While 140,000 died in Hiroshima, and 70,000 in Nagasaki, the survivors – 85% of whom were civilians – not vaporized during the attacks continued to suffer burns, infection, radiation sickness and cancer, which would ultimately result in another 160,000 deaths. In a succession of riveting personal accounts, the film reveals both unimaginable suffering and extraordinary human resilience. Sakue Shimohira, ten years old at the time, recalls the moment she considered killing herself after losing the last member of her family, saying, "I realized there are two kinds of courage – the courage to die and the courage to live."

"Other survivors include: Kiyoko Imori, just blocks from the hypocenter, the only survivor of an elementary school of 620 students; Shigeko Sasamori, 13 years old at the time, one of the 25 "Hiroshima Maidens" brought to the U.S. for plastic surgery; Keiji Nakazawa, who lost his father, brother and two sisters, and devoted his life to retelling his story in comic books and animation; Shuntaro Hida, a young military doctor at the time, who began treating survivors immediately after the explosion and continues to provide care for them 60 years later; and Etsuko Nagano, who still can't forgive herself for convincing her family to come to Nagasaki, just weeks before the bombing.
"In addition to physical suffering, survivors were later subjected to intense discrimination from fellow Japanese, and received little or no help from the Japanese government. To this day, to identify oneself as an atomic-bomb survivor, or a descendant of a survivor in Japan, can invite prejudice.
"The four Americans profiled are: Morris Jeppson, the weapon test officer on the Enola Gay mission to Hiroshima; Lawrence Johnston, a civilian employee of the University of California, which manages Los Alamos; Harold Agnew, a scientific advisor; and Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, the navigator who believed the mission would end the war and save lives overall.

"Today, as global tensions rise, the unthinkable once more becomes possible. The urgency of the warning conveyed in WHITE LIGHT/BLACK RAIN is borne out by a comment from one of the four Americans: 'We have opened Pandora's box, and the genie can't be stuffed back in the bottle.'"

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