Learning cancer from radiation was continuing to affect atomic bomb survivors and their children. Narrated by ms. Lifton the Film Documents the origins of hiroshimas peace park and tells the story of how hand made paper cranes became a symbol of peace and remembrance for victims of the august 6th, 1945 atomic bombing of the city. In japan there is an old belief that a crane can live for a thousand years. If you fold a thousand paper cranes, they will protect you from illness. After the bomb fell on hiroshima, august 6th, 1945, the people folded paper cranes. Today in hiroshima men, women, and children are still folding paper cranes. Especially children. For they stirl suffering from radiation effects of the bomb. What is it like to be a child in hiroshima so many years after the war . These children look like children anywhere. They are in the peace park and the monument behind them is dedicated to the 70,000 people known to have died from the bomb. Although estimates go as high as 200,000 or more. It was 8 15 on a hot summer morning much like this one when that first bomb flashed through the sky and destroyed the city in its flaming heat. Now Children Play in the fountain in front of the peace museum, which bears grim testimony of what the bomb did to the first city that experienced it. When they walk home from school through the park the children can see the atomic dome in the distance. It was once the industrial exhibition hall. Now it is the only shell left standing from the atomic blast. But all children make their way to the childrens monument in the park. It was erected after the death of a child who died from leukemia at the age of 12, ten years after the bomb fell. Now children bring paper cranes as offerings to the monument. This young woman was a friend of sodakos. They would have been the same age if sodako had lived. But sodako has already become a legend in japan. He is the anne frank of hiroshima, remembered for her tragic death from radiation effects she was just one of hundreds of young people to suffer such a fate, but she became the symbol of them all. In her outstretched arms she holds a golden crane. Who was sodako . She might have been just an ordinary girl gossiping on the river bank if she had lived. She was just 2 years old when the bomb fell a mile from her home. And uninjured she was the fastest runner in her sixth grade class, a good swimmer, but suddenly developed the signs of leukemia. She laughed and sang bravely when her classmates came to visit her in the hospital, and she folded paper cranes. She wanted to make a thousand but she had reached only 964 when she died. No more summer hiking, no more swimming. And then as if the death of sodako symbolized all their deaths the children of hiroshima rose up together to do something about it. They raised money for this monument to remind the grownup world what a bomb can do to the young. Every morning the crane looks down over the city on its children. This little Nursery School is the first to be rebuilt after the war. It seems like such a normal scene, but the teacher reports on her days off to the hospital for blood transfusions. Around and around, the terrible memory of that day of the bomb must still go in her head. She tells the children nothing. The crane knows that this popular teacher has anemia. She was at home, a little over a mile from the explosion, and uninjured. When she was in the sixth grade her gums began to bleed. The symptoms went away. In her third grade of Junior High School she became weak. It was diagnosed as anemia. For the past five years, she has been in and out of hospitals. She doesnt talk about the past. Her father was wounded in the post office when the bomb fell and died a year later. One of her sisters was never found. She doesnt talk about the future either. She knows that other japanese do not like to marry the survivors. They consider them tainted. They want women in the family who will produce healthy children. Other peoples children may be all shell ever have in her uncertain life. The crane often watches down over this little girl. Three years ago her mother suddenly became ill. Then she died of leukemia. A word the child could not understand. This is her picture, taken just before she died at the age of 27. And this is the buddhist altar for her. Her mother was only 13 when the bomb fell. She was not hurt at the time. She did not suspect the radiation effects lodging in her body would some day separate her from her beloved child. Doctors do not know if her weakness is inherited. This girls brother was only 16 when he died of leukemia six years ago. Her family became poor, paying his medical expenses. Now her father makes glass cases for dolls. He wishes he and his family could live in the protected world of dolls. But he cannot forget his lost son. She was born three years after the war. Her dearest dream was to have an organ, which her family saved to get her. She says she often thinks about her brother when she plays. Her brother entered the city a week after the bomb fell. He ate canned goods from an exposed army supply depot. After that, he was never well. No one diagnosed radiation until he got the symptoms of leukemia. Then the doctor said it might have been from the exposed canned food. Her mother, who also ate the food, is usually weak. Weakness is one of the symptoms most survivors seem to have. But her body is also swollen, and she complains of internal pain. She likes to make cranes with her mother in memory of her brother. If only his suffering has not been in vain, she says. Paper cranes. I shall write peace on their wings and you shall nigh all ov i shall write peace on your wings, and you shall fly all over the world. She has joined a group of her shimma children dedicated to peace. They call themselves the folded crane club. Until recently, they met in this shack behind the atomic dome. It belongs to ichiro, a day laborer, and his wife, both bomb survivors. The folded crane club. Some men are meant to be the conscience of their time. Ichiro, wearing the white hat, is one of them. He is like a pied piper to the children of hiroshima. The tune he plays is that everyone must work for peace in the world. Each week he and the children print a newspaper on their peace activities for the survivors in the hospitals. They also write letters to heads of states and to the united nations, pleading for universal disarmament. Mrs. Kawamoto earns some money sewing. They met in a bible class where they struggled to find some union in the disaster that had befallen their city. Her leg was permanently crippled when the impact of the blast knocked her unconscious outside her home. Like her mother, she often feels weak. Although they love children, they have none of their own. She fears having them because of the two deformed babies born to her sister. I cannot take the risk of producing monda producing monstrosities, she says. He was outside the city when the bomb fell, but came in immediately with a rescue team and was exposed to the radiations. The children know that he is weak, but they cannot persuade him to rest. He keeps thinking, perhaps this pamphlet will be the one to convince the world that there must never be another nuclear war. They have nothing for themselves. Ragged bedding, scrapbooks on the folded crane club, sodakos school picture, portraits of other children who have died since the war. This dark, unheated shack, with ichiro and tokiro built out of the rubble of their city has become the childrens spiritual home. And always, the atomic dome is their backdrop, their reminder what a city looks like after a Nuclear Attack. Are the survivors of the Nuclear Attack luckier than the dead . The atomic bomb hospital is still filled with survivors needing checkups or treatments. The children of the folded crane club come here regularly to distribute their newspapers and cranes. But are the children of hiroshima really children or the legacy of death which the bomb has left them . No. An atomic bomb wipes out childhood when it wipes out a city. To these children, a hospital is a familiar place. Mr. Miyamoto was stationed in hiroshima in the army at the time the bomb fell. At the time he was not harmed but seven years ago he began to feel dizzy and experience internal pain. He receives blood now twice a week. He has been here for three years but the doctors do not tell him when he can go home. In the meantime, he makes boats, which he gives to visitors. He tells the children to stay pure in their motives as they work for peace. This 35yearold woman has been in the hospital for the past two years. Her leg was injured in the bombing, but now she has kidney troubles and frequent bouts of jaundice. Her husband died of cancer, said to be due to radiation effects. Her children are living in an orphanage until she can care for them. But when will that be . Tell mothers in other countries what a bomb can do, she says. Tell them to work for peace. Her children keep their doll with them in the orphanage. The oldest, age 13, always reads their mothers letters to her younger sister. Dear children, i hope you are well and enjoying yourselves. She is always thinking of the two days a month she can visit her mother. The little one likes to talk of the day they will live together in a house of their own. She doesnt say anything then. She understands that her mother will be too weak to work even if she gets out of the hospital. They have many more years of this orphanage. She can look out to the inland sea, to the island otherwise known as boys island. It was the largest orphanage after the war. It was founded in 1946 when a teacher noticed thousands of vagrant orphans hanging around the railroad stations taking part in black marketeering and prostitution. One september night he went out with a truck and literally abducted 60 orphans at the station. When he got to the pier, he had only 43 boys left, but they were the original ones to come to boys island. Only one of those boys is still on the island. Satto, teaching woodworking on the left. He was 10 years old when he arrived that dramatic first night. Now he is 27. Sattos mother, a widow, was killed on her way to work in the building that is now the atomic dome. He became separated from his brother and sister in the confusion of those chaotic weeks. He still doesnt know if they are alive. Satto has many memories as he helps these orphans do what he did as a child. His group have all gone back to hiroshima to make their way. Only satto seems held to the island by ties of the past. And, yet, he says he feels apart from these children. They have never known the nightmares of children who have lived through an atomic blast. Satto likes to climb the hill to visit mr. Moris grave and report what is happening. He took off his hat on request. He asked if his hair looked all right from the back. He was really asking if it was long enough to hide the scars he is still so ashamed of. Half of his body was burned. He forces himself to believe he has no radiation damage yet he admits the fear of it is always there. Just as a city that has been burned can be rebuilt, so could a mans skin build scar tissue. But his mind cannot get rid of that fear. The disease has become as much an emotional condition as a physical one. How often over the years satto has looked out at the mainland. How he would like to forget hiroshima. On the surface it would be so easy to forget. Most of its population of 450,000 is made up of outsiders, who rushed in to take advantage of the frontier conditions. There was the rumor that for 75 years trees and flowers would never grow again in hiroshima. They are growing. But in the shadow of fear that still hangs over the 90,000 survivors, fear of leukemia, fear of cancer, fear of genetic effects, fear of liver and blood diseases. The people of hiroshima walk the streets of their city carrying these fears. And every day they pass the bank. On the front steps there is still the shadow of the man who sought refuge there. He was caught in the bomb explosions light as if he had been photographed for posterity, a reminder that after a Nuclear Blast only the shadow of man remains. A shadow in the stone. The crane on top of the childrens monument knows all these things, but he wants people in other countries to know about hiroshima and the bomb. Tell everyone to work for peace, he says. Tell them to make certain there will be no more hiroshimas. Tell them about sodako, our childrens monument. Tell them to fold paper cranes together, to write peace on their wings, and they shall fly all over the world. Tell them that they can form their own clubs for peace, like the children of the folded cranes club that they, too, can wash away the worlds ills. Tell them it is up to the children of the world to sweep away the Nuclear Ashes of the past. To sweep out war. To sweep in peace. Tell them on the night of august 6th, the anniversary of the bomb, to think of hiroshima. On that night the members of the folded crane club walk with lanterns through the city and send them down the river to console the spirits of the children who have dude. On each lantern they write a childs name. They send them out with a personal prayer that they, the living, shall keep their memory alive. Sometimes they are led in song by one of hiroshimas poets. Give back my father. Give back my mother. Give grandpa back, grandma back. Give me my son and daughters back. Give me back myself. Give mankind back. Give us back to each other. So long this life lasts. Give peace back to us. Peace that will never end. Week nights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight a look at the uss indianapolis. On july 30th, 1945 two japanese torpedos sunk the uss indianapolis in sharkinfested waters. Only 317 out of 1196 crew members survived. They were not rescued for several days. On the 75th anniversary of the ships sinking, congress awarded the entire crew the congressional gold medal, its highest civilian honor. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern and enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan 3. We continue with the bombing of hiroshima, japan, that led to the end of world war ii. Coming up a discussion about how film makers tried to document the results of the 1945 bombing before the films were confiscated for decades. Youll see portions of some of the films. Then a 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