Genbaku Shi: Killed By the Atomic Bomb

Sitting in his boat, fishing in his golden years, filmmaker Casey G. Williams' father DuWayne is haunted by hellish memories of a horror which most of us can't even imagine. "Excited" by the prospect of being one of the first Americans to enter Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945, Williams mood quickly turned as he saw the extent of the destruction: half a city reduced to rubble with 75,000 people dead, literally incinerated. The younger Williams followed his father on a journey into the past, recalling his entry into the war as a young kid, revisiting the aircraft carrier on which he served, and even interviewing the pilot and crew of the B-29 which dropped the bomb. He also located a Japanese woman named Tokiko Stuckey, living only 50 miles from his home. Stuckey was an 11-year-old child in Nagasaki when the bomb exploded; less than 800 meters from the hypocenter, she miraculously survived. The painful meeting of Williams and Stuckey--bound together by a single horrific event--is one of the most powerful scenes in the film. Another occurs when a military film shows and lists the physical destruction of the city, while the younger Williams' narration interpolates the unspoken human cost for each blasted building. "Was the bomb necessary? Who knows?" asks DuWayne Williams, and although he cannot answer the question, it is one his memory continually forces him to ask. Winner of a CINE Golden Eagle and the 1994 Student Academy Award, Genbaku Shi forcefully combines images of the horrors of atomic warfare with the personal odyssey of one man to create a stirring remembrance of a terrible episode of recent history. With 1995 marking the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, larger libraries will want to consider this excellent testimonial. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)