Confiscated for decades. Youll see portions of some of the films. Then in 1945 War Department film documenting the final months of the b29 super fortress air campaign against japan. Thats followed by a discussion about president trumans order of the use of the atomic bomb, all part of what youll see every weekend during American History tv here on cspan3. Dozens of films documenting the aftermath of the atomic bombs that were dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki, japan, in august of 1945, are available at the u. S. National archives in maryland. The films shot by japanese and american crews were hidden and off limits to the public for decades after world war ii ended. Up next, on reel america, historian greg mitchell, author of atomic coverup, two u. S. Soldiers, hiroshima and nagasaki, and the greatest movie never made joins us to tell the story of these films. We begin with a portion of a film describing the morning of august 6th, 1945, in hiroshima. This Program Includes scenes of atomic bomb victims that some viewers may find disturbing. It was the 6th of august, the air raid alarm, which had been on from the night before throughout the district, was lifted for the time being. It was an unusually calm and clear morning. A few minutes after 8 00, two superfortresses in formation appeared over the city. Then a bomb came hurtling down from one of the giant bombers. There was a blinding flash, then a deafening explosion. In an instant, hiroshima was a scene of unprecedented chaos. Hiroshima was instantly transfigured. There was nothing left but ruins. Nothing standing to hinder a full view of the city. In the first days after the atomic bombing of hiroshima and then nagasaki three days later, 75 years ago now, the leading japanese news reel team said one or more cameramen to the two cities. And they shot footage of the aftermath, not just the buildings but survivors, victims told the whole story. This footage was shipped back to tokyo where it was soon suppressed by the American Occupation when they arrived in early september. The news reel team then tried again, and they sent several people, elite people, actually, to hiroshima, nagasaki, and again, they shot footage, extensive footage for the next month, and then when the americans arrived in nagasaki, again, the footage was seized. And the japanese, however, since they had been there before the americans, and had totally historic footage, that showed medical effects as well as physical effects, the americans then ordered them to actually continue their work but under american supervision. And so the japanese went back to work. They shot more footage. They were then ordered to edit and narrate a documentary which they did, two hours and 40 minutes. But again, under american supervision, they finished this documentary, and it was seized by the American Military. And basically suppressed for decades, really, until the late 1960s. The americans, meanwhile, we can get into that, then began shooting color footage of the aftermath, and that footage, too, would be suppressed for decades. So its really a story, i mean, my book and my film and my current book all talk about how this footage, both black and white and color, both japanese and american, was totally suppressed for decades as a way to control what americans were allowed to see about the aftermath of the atomic bombings. As we drew close to the epicenter, we found that because the blast came from overhead, such perpendicular objects as the gateway which is not a strong structure in itself, remained erect on the ground. This is the commercial and industrial exhibits building built of brick, 300 meters from the epicenter. Why did the japanese make these films that are so scientific and carefully constructed . Well, when they first arrived, they, of course, they didnt know what they were going to find. It was just quite shocking just to be there. And they, of course, they were the victims, you know, we can talk about them being the perpetrators of the war, but in terms of the atomic bombings, they certainly were the victims, up to 200,000 died. 90 of them were civilians, and even the survivors suffered horribly from these unique burns and radiation effects. So they were shooting in the hospitals, makeshift hospitals, shacks, documenting the aftermath where people were suffering from a new disease. You could say it was incredibly important just from a medical standpoint, because they were documenting the emergence of a new disease in the world, the radiation sickness caused by an atomic bomb. A brother and sister who were upstairs in their house two kilometers southwest of the epicenter. It was reported that after about a week, they began to develop symptoms of anorexia, gingal bleeding, and fever. Mother and daughter shown here were both inside their house, two kilometers southwest of the epicenter. The daughter was injured when an ice box fell on top of her. The mother had no visible injuries and was nursing her daughter outside of the city when a month later she herself became seriously ill. And so thats why they were, you know, they were intent on capturing that, and they did. But also, it was important for the u. S. To then hide that footage because they didnt want americans to see the effects. They wanted the americans to turn the page, war was over. And you know, they didnt really want to see what happened to the people, the civilians, and theyre almost all women and children, elderly men, i think we still wanted people to believe we had bombed military facilities and killed soldiers and so forth, but just wasnt the case. And i mean, the japanese did for posterity and for the occupiers, the americans there, they tried to do an honest job with this, with the footage they had. Three days after the tragedy visited hiroshima, the 9th of august, 1945, the day was calm, bright, and windless. A hot summer sun shone upon the city. Since early morning, the alarm was on in the nagasaki area. Then, it was lifted. But for two hours and a half, the warning continued to prevail. Then exactly at 11 00, two superfortresses appeared above the city from the northeasterly direction, flying at a high altitude. The first plane dropped three objects attached to parachutes. After 11 02, the second plane dropped an object. Its descent taking about 40 seconds. Then came a blinding flash, followed by an explosion and a blaze. The destruction was the greatest ever wrought by man. All buildings save those of enforced concrete, were demolished. The whole of this neighborhood, once teemed with wooden houses and small factories, now is flattened out and denuded of everything. Only pebbles and broken tiles remain. They were directed to make this documentary focusing on mainly on the physical effects, the effects on plants, the effects on other things in the natural world, with some focus on injuries to people. Its mainly not showing the survivors. You know, its mainly showing a wide range. I think youre scrolling through here, a good variety of what was shown. Shadow effects, of course, are quite dramatic, how the flash of the bomb threw up permanent shadows on the buildings and sidewalks and so forth. And so the footage shows scientists, japanese scientists studying this. Making measurements and calculating the direction of the bomb and so on. So its quite an amazing document, and people can view it now at the National Archives or even online. It is available. But nobody in america saw it until around 1970. My film that will eventually be coming out, we did the first 4k modern transfers so the quality is much better. If people want to know more about your film thats not released yet but will be soon, tell us what they can do. Well, they can go to my blog, pressing issues, where i have put up four brief clips from the film. The film is about 50 minutes long. These clips are short, but they do include footage of the black and white footage and the color footage and a little bit about whats being shown. So its a very good gives you a very good idea of what my film is about and what about the footage is about and why its important. Theres really quite a dramatic story about this whole project. I mean, the people, the americans after the japanese completed this 2 40 documentary, the American Military suddenly arrived and seized not just the original print but every scrap of outtake, everything that was not used with hours of footage. And that footage has never surfaced. Its known as the phantom film in japan. Because even though this two hour and 40 minute documentary did emerge eventually from the shadows, all of the outtakes, all of what they call the scraps and leftover material has never surfaced. Its either still buried or it was destroyed by the americans. So thats the phantom film, but what happened was when the japanese news reel team found out they were about to be raided by the americans, they did spirit out one i guess the original print, and had a copy made at great risk. Risk of imprisonment by the americans. Had one copy made. And they then came back and hid that copy in the ceiling of an editing suite where it remained for several years. So Everything Else was shipped back to the u. S. The japanese kept it. The occupation was still going on. They kept it in the ceiling. Then after several years, they brought it out, and actually, the first even small bits of it that anyone saw in the west was sort of smuggled out to rene for his feature, famous feature, hereiroshima man amor. It was a drama set in hiroshima, but he used small bits of it in his foreign film. So thats how the west saw even tiny bits of it, but it did not a larger part of it was never seen until and we can talk about this if you want, aired on pbs just after 1970. So tell us about this film. Well, erik barnow found out in the late 1960s, he was at columbia at the time and already a famous writer on documentary films. He found out that this footage had been quietly declassified at the National Archives. And so he then made a 15minute rather artful, understated documentary, which were looking at right now, parts of it, called hiroshima nagasaki 1945, and managed to get Public Television to air it around another august 6th anniversary. This caused great controversy at the time. Some people thought this was not a proper idea, i. D. And they at least one station refused to run it. When it was aired, there was a panel that came on after to discuss it, i guess, to give more of a context rather than let it speak for itself. But he basically took the two hours and 40 minutes, took 15 minutes of highlights, with narration, and you know, it did cause quite a stir. And it was available for many years as a vhs tape. In hiroshima on that day, half the doctors were killed. At the hospitals, between 3,000 and 10,000 people came each day for help. And each day, 2,000 of them died. They were buried together because there were too many to bury separately. And so it was an historic moment. Now, this is in, like i said, 1970, 1971. The color footage shot by the americans at that point was still unknown and no one had ever seen. Were seeing the first bits of it here, okay. Actually, that card there, its a very interesting story itself, if you want to hold that. Cameraman harry mimura. Now its not a name Many Americans know, but he was a wellknown japanese cinematographer who was born in japan, actually went to hollywood, worked on mainstream hollywood movies in the 1930s. Went back to japan, and actually in 1942, was the cinematographer for curacaos very first movie. Thats how prominent he was. He waw then enlisted by the americans to shoot most of their footage. And so thats, again, the level of quality that went into this. And harry mimura then shot much of this footage that, some of this youre going to see now. This scene here is nurses marching into the Red Cross Hospital in hiroshima, which was badly damaged. And they were this footage was shot in the fall or winter following the atomic bombing. Where was this color footage then . Its marked at the National Archives as United States air force. But when did people first learn about this . Well, i guess its kind of a long story, but one of the handful of men who took part in this project was a man named Herbert Sussan. He got out of the military and went on to be one of the pioneering network tv producers and directors. But he was haunted by what he had seen there. And so he had tried for years to get permission to get at this footage, which was kept on basically a military archives for so long. And was never allowed. Then in the late 1970s, he happened to attend a u. N. Exhibit of photos from hiroshima and saw an image, basically a still from this footage, and he told the organizer, well, i shot that. Or my team shot that footage, and of course, the man was shocked. What are you talking about . He said this is this is footage i shot back in 1945, 1946, and that led to the japanese to then investigate. They found that the color footage had all been declassified at the National Archives a few years earlier, but no one knew about it. It was just as if it had not been declassified. So the japanese then launched a mass movement. It was called the tenfoot campaign. You would donate a certain amount of money and you could buy ten feet of this 90,000 feet of footage, and they ended up getting all of the relevant footage back in japan and started making films in the early 1980s. Actually, the first time i was exposed to this was in new york in 1982, when that first japanese documentary was shown, and Herbert Sussan spoke before it. I then became good friends with herbert. I edited at a magazine called nuclear times. The first article ever about this, this footage, and then it became, i guess you could say, a mini sensation. Documentary filmmakers then started to use it. Everyone knew about it. And so thanks to Herbert Sussan and the japanese, the footage finally emerged after 35 years. Have you seen the japanese documentaries using this footage . Yes, i have. How would you compare it to american works . Well, they did a very interesting thing. From the very start. This was a big new project in the news in japan. As you can imagine. Covered as this incredible finding. And so the press was, you know, covered this, and they located some of the people who were shown in this footage. In fact, a couple of them i met myself years later in japan. So they tracked down some of the people shown in the original footage, then they would kind of show the original footage, and then talk to the person in 1980 about how they felt about it or, you know, the story behind it. And so thats pretty much how they handled it. They definitely did kind of a before and after treatment in most cases. Do you know if president truman or other policy leaders ever saw these films . I dont really. You know, they were classified, top secret at the start, and they just kind of remained. They got shuffled to different, you know, military repositories. But as far as i know, no top person had that. There was a screening of the japanese, the black and white footage, which i document in the book. Where more of the top brass was shown. Heres what we have, and out of that came, okay, you have to keep this secret. And so that just endured. Once things are classified, unless someone takes a step to declassify them or release it to the media or whatever, you know, nobody knows about it. And thats what happened in this case. Do you think that americans in 2020 should watch these films . Well, obviously, i do, since i just made a film based on them. Why . You know, the selections youre showing are i mean, theyre representative in some ways. The footage could be edited into a long feature with subtlety, not necessarily focusing on the most graphic images. These images are pretty hard to take. And i understand that. So i wouldnt expect, and i didnt make a film where people have to sit there for an hour or two watching this. You know, put it in context, you can show, you know, the stories of the filmmakers, which is basically what my film is about, really about the japanese and american filmmakers. Their stories, the whole film is told first person. The japanese filmmakers, cameramen, talk about what they saw, how they experienced it, and the american filmmakers. Its entirely from the point of view of the filmmakers. And you know, half of them were american soldiers or officers. So its not you know, its very sympathetic to the American Military, in trying to shoot this footage, and the people who did it. But ultimately, the sameit. But ultimately the same military and government hid the foot anl so it is kind of a story of elite filmmakers versus the government and versus the public right to know, should the public have been allowed to see this footage from the start. Would it have made a difference. My late evest book is how mgm ma film resized, sabotaged by the white house and the military in the same year they were suppressing this footage. So it was part of an overall drive by those in authority to manage what i call the hiroshima narrative. To keep the story focused on the use of the bomb that allegedly was the only thing that could end the war, saved a million american lives and so forth. It was important to keep that not interrupted by images and stories that might make people have second thoughts about that. So that is all part of this whole postwar routine. Your new book the beginning or the end, how hollywood and america learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, what is that about, basically . Well, as i mentioned, immediately after, very shortly after the bombing, a group of atomic scientists within the Manhattan Project approached mgm studio and they did it through the actress donna reed which is kind of interesting, but to make a film that would warn the world about the dangers of going down continuing down this path to make more powerful weapons and more weapons, nuke arms race with the soviets, Hydrogen Bomb and everything that did follow. They make a big hollywood drama. And louie b. Mayor, the head of mgm, said, yes, well do this and the first scripts were very balanced. They showed effects in hiroshima on the ground and raised questions about the use of the bomb and raised questions about further creation of the bomb, bigger bombs. And then mgm allowed both general gross, who was head of the Manhattan Project and the white house and president truman to intervene and have script approval so the book charts how the following year both the military and president truman intervened in an unprecedented fashion to revise the script and cut out things, such as the bombing of nagasaki which was eliminated entirely, doesnt turn up once in the film. And shape a movie that was probomb propaganda that came out in early 1947. And again the very same months this documentary footage that weve been talking about, was suppressed. And that film eventually came out and hollywood is only made two movies about the bomb, about the creation and use of the bomb since. So it is kind of remarkable when you think about. Three films, three moves in 75 years. But the book goes back to the origin of that. And how this first film was totally turned in a different direction. The whole thing is terrifying. You must have spent many sleepless nights over it. Ive consulted with mr. Churchill, with all of the top military and naval advisers, ive talked with the civilian heads of our war effort and all of the advisers tell me the bomb will shorten the war by at least a year. Where are we going to use it . That is another question i had to think about. The army has selected several japanese city as prime military targets. So 25 years ago you coauthored this book with robert j. Lifton, hiroshima in america, 50 years of denial, 75 years after the bomb. How you could summarize your thoughts about the United States relationship with hiroshima and nagasaki . Well, some people might say why have you been writing about this for 38 years. Why did it matter today. . You cant bring back dead civilians or change the direction of the arms race and that is all sadly true. But what drives me and really has driven me is that we still have at least 5,000 nuclear weapons, war heads on alert here in the u. S. And other countries have them as well. But what most people dont know is the United States has a first use policy, which means any president has the sort of okay to launch a nuclear war, not in retaliation, like in the movies, when missiles are coming in, but as a first strike. So you could call it the first strike policy. Absolutely okay to do that in response to a conventional attack or even a threat. And polls show that, recents show that a good enough of americans, 30 to 40 say they would support a first strike on, for example, north korea or iran if they started making threatening noises toward the u. S. Even though, in the polls, theyre asked, even if this would kill a million civilians and people say, you know, sure. This goes back to the hiroshima narrative that only our bombs could have ended the war at that time and saved what was claimed to be a million american lives. And so that narrative has endured in the media, certainly even today. Most in the media, or few in the media ever really challenged that and certainly officials really challenged that. So it is something that is endured for 75 years and it is certainly worth a debate. It is not a black and white debate. I always welcome debate studying evidence and so on and so forth. But the fact is, the fact is that Many Americans and those in the media continue to endorse that, only makes further use more likely. It is a precedent, but a precedent endorsed every year. Were at another anniversary. This will maybe be the last time such a major anniversary is marked. And again, i dont see much evidence that the media or officials or anyone is particularly rising up to challenge this. Myself and of course a few others. But so that is what has driven me, i guess. It is not just a matter of the past. This is a very very much relative topical issue today because how we respond, how we look at the fact that we used the bomb twice, it informs todays policy and attitudes, informs just cant imagine a nuclear threat, a crisis today, call it what you will, suddenly the world crisis with some of our rivals or enemies that are making threatening noises and there is any president with the nuclear codes, as you know, what they call the nuclear football, always within a few yards, who could launch a Nuclear Attack any time. So, i think hiroshima and nagasaki do matter very much today, even if there is nothing we can do to change what was done in 1945. Greg mitchell, thank you very much for joining us and helping us understand these films. Well, i was very happy to do this. Thank you. The cities of hiroshima and nagasaki. For a moment tragic scenes of devastation have begun to recover with the passage of time. Slowly but surely efforts toward construction are being made. Insufficient though the studies by scientists have been, they have given hope and light to these cities and their citizens. Weeknights this month, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, a look at the uss indianapolis. On july 30th, 1945, two japanese torpedos sunk the uss indianapolis in shark infested waters. Only 317 out of 1196 crew members survived. They were not rescued for several days. On the 75th anniversary of the ship sinking, congress awarded the entire crew the congressional gold medal, the highest civilian honor. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern and enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events. You could watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online, or listen on our free radio app. And be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily Washington Journal Program or through your social media feeds. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. 75 years ago on march 9th and 10th, 1945, nearly 300 u. S. B29 bombers executed operation meeting house, the fire bombing of tokyo. Much of the city was destroyed and the estimates of civilians killed ranged from 80,000 to 130,000 people. Up next on reel america, the last bomb. This Academy Award nominated War Department film detailed the process of a similar tokyo Bombing Mission in the summer of 1945 showing planning, execution and return after 3,000 miles of flight