Censoring Hiroshima

I remember first hearing in high school, more than 30 years ago, the assertion that the U.S. atomic attack on Japan was a war crime. I rejected it out of hand. I'd been reading a lot about the Holocaust in Europe, and believed passionately that the Nazi extermination of 10 million innocent civilians was a war crime. America dropping bombs on an enemy didn't remotely approach what I considered a war crime.

I had been well and truly indoctrinated.

Greg Mitchell explains:

This Friday marks the 65th anniversary of the first use of the atomic bomb against a large city. Since that day, creative artists of every variety have made incisive, satiric or powerful statements about nuclear threat. They have offered cautionary works that depict the horror of the bomb or its meaning in our society. What these artistic statements share, however, with rare exceptions, is an avoidance of the specific subject of Hiroshima.

Since August 1945, hundreds of "nuclear" movies have appeared. At least one American "nuclear" film was a work of genius (Dr. Strangelove), and several others explored the issue thoughtfully (Fail-Safe, The War Game, Testament and Desert Bloom come to mind). But more often the fear of nuclear war in Hollywood spawned survivalist fantasies, irradiated-monster films and post-apocalypse thrillers.

What is striking is that few of these films say anything directly about Hiroshima. Almost all of them are works of pure fiction, imagining nuclear attacks in the near or distant future while ignoring the two instances when atomic weapons have already been used: Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Only three Hollywood movies have emerged about the making or use of the first atomic bombs: The Beginning or the End, Above and Beyond, and Fat Man and Little Boy (the only such film since the 1950s).

Ambivalence or guilt is certain to be evoked by any cinematic treatment of Hiroshima. Perhaps that is why the films all grapple with the notion of American decency. The three Hollywood films have much in common: Each was highly touted and directed by a talented film maker but was an artistic failure. Each was subject to political pressure or scrutiny. Here's a close-up look at the "coverup"--led by the Truman White House--of the first "Hiroshima movie," some of it based on material we were first to discover at the Truman Library in Missouri.

Read the whole thing.