White Light Black Rain: powerful HBO film about atomic bombing of Japanese cities

On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 am on a clear and sunny morning, the US B-29 bomber the Enola Gay dropped a 15-kiloton atomic bomb, codenamed “Little Boy,” over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. An estimated 140,000 people, out of a population of nearly 300,000, were killed immediately or shortly afterward. Everything at or near the hypocenter of the bomb was instantly vaporized. It was the world’s very first encounter with nuclear weapons.

Three days later on August 9, US bombers dropped a second, 21-kiloton atomic bomb, codenamed “Fat Man,” onto the city of Nagasaki. An estimated 70,000 people, nearly all civilians, were killed within a short period of time, many of them also instantly vaporized.

The new HBO film, made by veteran documentarian Steven Okazaki, allows 14 survivors of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to speak about their memories of that day and those that followed the bombing. Their accounts reveal, in the most personal and shocking manner, the horror that resulted from these barbaric crimes.