by ROBERT JACOBS
“Typical early photograph of Hiroshima published in the United States, seen from the air and without any visible human beings. Notice that the title, “Damage in Hiroshima,” seems to describe the damage to buildings and not to people.”
On August 17, 2010, the National Geographic Channel premiered a new documentary titled 24 Hours After Hiroshima on its National Geographic Explorers series.1 While the title suggests, and the film itself claims that it will provide an in depth look at the immediate aftermath of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima in 1945, what it presents for the most part—with certain fascinating exceptions—is the orthodox American narrative of the bombings, supplemented with a brief examination of the strategic bombing survey and of the impact of the weapon on the civilian population of Hiroshima.
The film suffers from the shortcomings of many cable historical documentaries (over dramatization, lack of depth, and flawed reenacting), but it does go beyond the historical narration typical of what might be labeled “orthodox American Hiroshima documentaries” by including the stories and presence of living hibakusha, survivors of the bomb. The historical presentation nevertheless hews closely to triumphal American ideas about the bomb, the war and American power: the bombings singularly ended the war and saved lives—both American and Japanese—and its focus on Hiroshima reduces the bombing of Nagasaki to a historical footnote.
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