Hiroshima, mon amour

More than 140,000 people were killed when an atomic bomb hit Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Photograph: A Peace Memorial Museum Handout/EPA

Why Hollywood ignores Hiroshima

15 August 2010 12:00 PM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Ronald Bergan ponders why American films are so reluctant to depict the Hiroshima bombing.
American cinema is omnivorous. It has swallowed almost every subject from the trivial to great historical events, and then spewed them up. However, there is one subject it has refused to tackle directly: the bombing of Hiroshima and its consequences.
As it is now 65 years since the horrific event, the omission seems even more astounding. Is there is an element of collective guilt because the Us is the only country ever to have used a nuclear weapon on a civilian population? It cannot be because the subject is too appalling to depict, since many other horrendous happenings have been portrayed graphically in American films.
The only references that American cinema, commercial or otherwise, has made to Hiroshima have been oblique. During the cold war, MGM produced Above and Beyond (1952), based on the experiences of Colonel Paul Tibbets, »
- Ronald Bergan