Hiroshima

is a 1953 Japanese docudrama film directed by Hideo Sekigawa about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and its impact. It tells the story of a group of teachers, their students, and their families in the years after the bomb. In a flashback sequence, tens of thousands of extras from Hiroshima, many of them survivors, helped recreate the "hellscape" immediately following the bombing. The film was based on the eye-witness accounts of the bombing's child survivors compiled by Dr. Arata Osada for the 1951 best-selling book Children Of The A Bomb: Testament Of The Boys And Girls Of Hiroshima (Genbaku no ko). Produced with the backing of the Japan Teachers Union, the film's "anti-American" stance and graphic content prevented it from gaining a wide release. It fell into obscurity, but has resurfaced in the late 2010s. Many of the cast and crew went on to play important roles in post-war Japanese cinema. Summary Hiroshima opens in a classroom as students and a teacher listen to a radio broadcast detailing the August 6, 1945 detonation of a nuclear bomb on the city. A girl cries out, "Stop it! Stop it!", and her nose begins to bleed. She and a third of the class are revealed to be afflicted by leukemia, the "A-bomb disease." The film shows how groups of people deal with the suffering brought about by the blast. Children are at the center of the narrative. Many are shown to have become "wayward scavengers" peddling souvenirs to tourists. Another, a school dropout, copes with his trauma by gambling. There's an emphasis on the discrimination leveled against the victims of the blast.