Full Version of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Film They Didn’t Want Us to See 34962

In 1946, the U.S. War Department produced a twelve-minute film about the atomic bomb as part of the Army-Navy Screen Magazine, called “A Tale of Two Cities”. The two cities were, of course, the devastated Japanese municipalities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The film begins with the Trinity test in the New Mexico desert in July 1945, noting that on that day, “the atomic age was born.” It then takes viewers on a tour of the ruins of the two devastated cities. Twenty years later in 1968, famed American filmmaker Eric Barnouw learned that a great deal of the footage in the movie was shot by Japanese filmmaker, Akira Iwasaki, who visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki to film the immediate aftermath of the bombings. The U.S military at first forced Iwasaki to halt filming but then ordered him to continue.

The footage was suppressed for decades before Barnouw received a letter from an environmentalist named Lucy Lemann alerting him to the existence of the material. Barnouw obtained the footage from the National Archives and then the footage down to this short film. It remains one of the most chilling documents from the atomic bombings.

This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com