White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
White Light Poster.jpg
Film poster
Directed by Steven Okazaki
Written bySteven Okazaki
Produced bySteven Okazaki
Distributed by Home Box Office
Release date
August 6, 2007 (2007-08-06)
Running time
86 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an HBO documentary film directed and produced by Steven Okazaki. It was released on August 6, 2007, on HBO, marking the 62nd anniversary of the first atomic bombing. The film features interviews with fourteen Japanese survivors and four Americans involved in the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Contents

Interviews

Japanese survivors

In preparation for the film, Okazaki met with more than 500 Japanese survivors of the bombings and collected over 100 interviews before settling on the fourteen subjects featured in the film. They were, in order of appearance, including age at the time of the bombings:

American personnel

Okazaki also interviewed four Americans for the film. Morris R. Jeppson, weapons test officer, and Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, navigator, were on board the Enola Gay during the bombing missions. Harold Agnew joined them as a scientific observer during the Hiroshima mission. Lawrence Johnston was a scientist at Los Alamos who claims to be the only person to have witnessed the Trinity test as well as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Recognition

White Light/Black Rain was named by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as one of 15 films considered for nomination as the Best Documentary Feature for the 80th Academy Awards. It was not included among the five nominees. [1] The film was also a nominee for the Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award at the 2008 Producers Guild Awards and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It did win the 2008 "Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking" Primetime Emmy Award.

See also

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References

  1. "Nominees and Winners". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 2008-02-27. Archived from the original on 2008-03-27. Retrieved 2008-03-28.