As a narrative this film is not particularly strong, but its context is of course extraordinary. Made seven years after the war just after the American occupation had ended, it dramatizes, and more importantly humanizes, the horrible consequences of the bombing of Hiroshima. It has a kindergarten teacher returning to that city to see the three students of her old class who survived, and paying her respects to family members who perished. The scenes where she is standing in ruins, remembering bygone events of happier times, or looking up into the sky or down at the river, are particularly poignant. To see the city itself in 1952 is fascinating, to see the people (even dramatized by actors) heartbreaking. The film wisely steers clear of the complicated question of whether dropping the bomb was necessary, and I think that's how it ought to be viewed; it simply shows us that in war, innocent people suffer, and in the new atomic age, in unprecedented ways, far larger and more monstrous than ever before. It's stunning to me that this was not seen in America until 2011.
Review of Children of Hiroshima
