- 5 months ago
On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., a bright flash set the sky over Hiroshima ablaze. A gigantic column of smoke rises above the city. The first nuclear bomb in history has just been dropped on the largest metropolis in western Japan. This new documentary shows this tragedy from the inside using photos taken that day.
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00:00Deep in the heart of the Pacific, the island of Tinian is getting ready for an operation that will mark the end of the Second World War.
00:13In total secrecy, a completely unknown weapon is loaded aboard a B-29 bomber.
00:20It's over ten feet long, weighs four and a half tons, cost around two billion dollars and took up to 140,000 people to make.
00:37It disappears into the hold. Little boy, history's first ever atomic bomb.
00:44At two in the morning, an elite team climbs on board the Enola Gay.
00:58Colonel Paul Tibbetts doesn't yet know their destination.
01:03One possible target is Hiroshima, in the west of Japan.
01:07In this one final attack, America claims it will end the war with Nazi Germany's ally, Japan.
01:14For the land of the rising sun, Hiroshima is a base of great logistical importance, and home to garrisons of up to 40,000 soldiers.
01:25In a city decimated by nuclear fire, one man, Yoshito Matsushige, will capture on film the moments immediately following the attack.
01:34For the first time, we can now witness in his photos the hell that it was to be there, under the cloud of Hiroshima.
01:44It's Monday the 6th of August in Hiroshima, and for its 350,000 inhabitants, it's the start of a lovely day.
01:59It's rush hour. The trams are packed with people off to work. The kids are on their way to school.
02:16I was on the second floor of the savings bureau. We opened all the windows facing the street full of trolley cars, and said, what a fine day.
02:31In the morning, I had breakfast at my usual restaurant, and just as I was about to leave, three underclass men came in.
02:43That day, I didn't have any summer holidays.
02:47Like every day at ten past seven, the air raid sirens have rung out.
02:56But for 45 minutes now, things have been back to normal.
03:00Everyone's used to seeing bombers over the city, and no one's too bothered by the silver B-29 that splits the sky.
03:07It was a bright sunny day. Those B-29s were flying high up in the clear sky. They were silver and so neat.
03:22As I was walking towards Sendamachi, there was a sudden boom.
03:29And then suddenly, something like a massive ball of fire came in through the windows.
03:35I tried to crouch down, covering my eyes and ears.
03:44Right over the Tsuchiya hospital, I saw the bomb as it dropped.
03:50At 8.15, little boy explodes 2,000 feet over Hiroshima.
03:57They call this point the hypocenter, ground zero.
04:01The sky lights up with a characteristic gamma ray flash.
04:05All living beings are blasted with radioactivity and die instantly, with no time for the pain to reach their brains.
04:12As the chain reaction unfolds, a huge fireball forms.
04:16At its center, the temperature can reach 6,000 degrees Celsius, as hot as the surface of the sun.
04:25The heat just carbonizes everyone. They just vanish in the heat.
04:30A shockwave then arises and sweeps through the city in a devastating wind of up to almost 1,000 miles an hour.
04:41A killer wind that blows bodies apart and destroys 60,000 buildings and homes.
04:46In a whirlwind of wind, steam and radioactive particles, a mushroom-shaped cloud forms, towering 7,5 miles high over Hiroshima.
05:02I didn't see the mushroom cloud. I was right under it.
05:09My body was blown away with the cards in my hands.
05:13Next moment, I lost consciousness.
05:18Obviously, I was knocked unconscious.
05:25When I came to, it was really dark.
05:29I couldn't see a hundred meters in front of me.
05:32It's just after the blast.
05:42Shinao Tsuboe and Mitsuko Kochi are still alive, miraculously shielded by either a wall or someone's body.
05:5070,000 others are already dead, though.
05:56For nearly 2 miles around, 90% of the city has been flattened.
06:01Huge fires are raging, and a huge cloud suffocates Hiroshima.
06:08It was so dark that I could hardly see the face of my wife.
06:12And she was right next to me.
06:14But she was holding my hand, so I realized we hadn't been killed by the bomb.
06:18Neither of us.
06:22Yoshito Matsushige is 32 years old.
06:26A photographer for the local Shigokushin-born newspaper, embedded with the military press corps.
06:37When the bomb goes off, he's less than 2 miles away from ground zero, at home with his pregnant wife.
06:44They're just finishing their breakfast.
06:50Where the wind came through, there was a huge hole in the wall.
06:54Right through both floors of the house, and the sitting room was full of debris.
06:58I pulled my camera out of the debris, put on the clothes I got from headquarters.
07:05I got ready, and went out.
07:09Yoshito wants to get to the center of town, but the shockwave has completely leveled Hiroshima.
07:15The streets are nothing but debris, burnt bodies, people with dreadful wounds.
07:25It's impossible to go any further with the heat of the fire, so he turns back and heads for the Miyuki Bridge.
07:31It was such an awful scene that I just couldn't press the shutter, not for at least 20 minutes.
07:45I eventually took a photo, then went in a few feet closer for another.
07:52But the viewfinder was clouded over with my tears.
07:56I still remember that to this day.
07:59It was just hell.
08:01It was just hell.
08:10Here they are, Yoshito Matsuhige's two photos on the Miyuki Bridge, taken on the 6th of August 1945, just three hours after the bomb went off.
08:23They're the very first photos to show so clearly the victims of the first atomic bomb in the history of mankind.
08:31There on the bridge, he realizes how lucky he has been, and just how violent the explosion was.
08:40He will write in his memoirs that he was born to be there at that moment.
08:48The wounded, all their eyes were fixed on me.
08:51It was as if they wanted me to tell the whole world what was happening to them.
08:54Was it cruel of me to photograph them?
08:57Or was it the best thing I could do?
09:00I was in terrible conflict.
09:02Matsushige's photos, preserved here in Hiroshima at the Shigoku Shimbun press offices, should never, in fact, have existed.
09:15In Japan, during the Second World War, it was an offence to photograph events that were bad for public morale.
09:24But unbeknownst to the authorities, the forbidden photos were circulated.
09:30The negatives were seriously deteriorated, and they might well have disappeared.
09:34But in the 1970s, painstaking restoration work saved them from oblivion.
09:46What did they really go through, these people preserved for eternity on the Miyuki Bridge?
09:51Who are they?
09:54What do they remember?
09:56Scarcely a word has been written about it.
09:59But the wounded, photographed by Yoshito Matsushige, have been identified.
10:05Their average age, now, would be well over 80.
10:09Only two of them are left.
10:11But ten other eyewitnesses have also been found.
10:14For the purposes of this unique investigation, a team of specialists has availed itself of the very latest technology.
10:26We must stick to what the witnesses have told us.
10:31When the images were scanned, new details started to emerge, hitherto invisible to the naked eye.
10:40Like these bodies here on the ground.
10:44Or this parapet, blown away by the explosion.
11:01By recreating the scene in 3D, and thanks to eyewitness accounts, the photos have been brought back to life.
11:07The better to understand what really went on in Hiroshima, in the heart of the mushroom cloud.
11:14What?
11:15How?
11:17Or this is the image.
11:31The better to understand what this is.
11:33That's correct.
11:35If you are not sure what is going on in Hiroshima, in the heart of the world, would you show us this thing?
11:37Hiroshima means the big island.
11:48It lies beside the Pacific Ocean.
11:51The many branches of the river Uta also wind through it.
11:55It's almost like a floating city.
11:57But when it gets so hot that all that water starts to boil, there's no way out of the trap.
12:02In the midst of all the frenzy, the Miyuki Bridge played a vital role for the survivors.
12:09It stood right at the edge of the fires that raged after the bomb, a mile and a half from the hypocenter.
12:20It was the bridge between life and death.
12:23On the Miyuki Bridge, Matsushige's photos are now part of an actual monument.
12:37The time has now come, though, for them to yield up their secrets.
12:45The survivors arrive at the Miyuki Bridge bearing all the scars of what they've been through in the explosion.
12:53The young girl next to the little boy looks like her hair has been burnt.
13:02Another's clothes are in tatters and her arms exposed.
13:09Off to the side, the people are all barefoot.
13:12Did they flee like that, with no shoes?
13:15Or did they lose them as they ran?
13:17If you put the photos side by side, you notice one figure that appears in both.
13:29A young girl in school uniform.
13:34Her name is Mitsuko Koshi.
13:38Here in 1945, she's 13 years old.
13:40She's in her second year at Hiroshima's Business School for Girls.
13:43She's under a mile from ground zero.
13:47Today, she's over 80.
13:49She still lives in Hiroshima.
13:52Mitsuko Koshi remembers everything about Monday, the 6th of August, 1945.
13:59In the photo, she's wearing a scarf given to her by her cousin,
14:03who works at the Yamaguchi police station.
14:06It's not part of Hiroshima's regular school uniform.
14:09Her sleeve is torn, and she's bleeding profusely.
14:16My friend ran over and clung to me.
14:19She said,
14:20Mitsuko, my head is cracked.
14:22I looked, and she was covered in blood.
14:24And since she was clinging on to me, I was covered in blood too.
14:30When the bomb goes off, Mitsuko isn't at school.
14:33She's been requisitioned to work at the Postal Savings Bank.
14:36The shockwave hits the building at 160 miles an hour.
14:41The building withstands it, but all its windows are blown in,
14:45and the flying glass seriously wounds Mitsuko and her friends.
14:49The building is right at the heart of the huge fires that follow the explosion.
14:55Six of the young girls somehow make it badly burned to the Miyuki Bridge.
15:00Mitsuko Koshi is overwhelmed by what she sees there.
15:03No one was talking.
15:06I didn't see anyone talking.
15:09Everyone was in silence, facing downwards.
15:12Some were crying in pain.
15:14Everyone looked like monsters.
15:17Some got burnt on their faces.
15:19That looked terrible.
15:20That looked terrible.
15:21He didn't look human.
15:25Half his body was covered in blood.
15:31Anyone not fully clothed ended up naked.
15:35They were everywhere.
15:37All black.
15:38Their clothes in tatters.
15:39They might have been a bit embarrassed, but it wasn't the moment to be prudish.
15:52For the 13-year-old girl, the Miyuki Bridge is like an antechamber of hell.
15:59What Mitsuko Koshi tells us, she has kept deep inside for over 70 years.
16:04A woman who was holding a child.
16:11She had her hair held up in a hair elastic.
16:15I suppose she was the older sister of the child.
16:18She was screaming and swirling around holding a charred child in her arms.
16:25I felt so sorry.
16:28The child was dead.
16:29I was dead.
16:30I was dead.
16:31She cried out a name, the child's name, I guess, and said, wake up, wake up.
16:50Of course, the baby never woke up.
16:53All we saw was a charred body.
16:54I was dead.
17:01I was dead.
17:02I was dead.
17:03I was dead.
17:04I was dead.
17:05I was dead.
17:06I was dead.
17:07I was dead.
17:08I was dead.
17:09I was dead.
17:10I was dead.
17:11Mitsuko has thought of that mother with her dead baby ever since, every single day.
17:17She can't forgive herself for not trying to help her.
17:25Infusion rains on the Miyuki bridge that morning of the 6th of August.
17:31It is three hours since the bomb went off and the wounded are crowding in wanting to get
17:36across to escape the heat of the city center.
17:40When Yoshito Matsushige takes these two photos, no one knows the explosion was a nuclear bomb.
17:46I don't remember who was there, yet I was standing there, in the photo.
17:54I wondered, why would this person be photographing such a terrible scene?
18:00At that time, a man in national uniform with a camera in his hands.
18:05Naturally, it felt strange to see a man with a camera.
18:13I remember he asked me, what happened to Hiroshima?
18:21So what really does happen that morning in Hiroshima, under the cloud?
18:26Witnesses tell us the wounded arriving at the Miyuki bridge are parched with thirst.
18:31Some of them throw themselves in the river, trying to cool off and soothe their wounds.
18:37But, exhausted, they drown.
18:39The Ota fills up with bodies.
18:41While up on the bridge, in deathly silence, everyone just waits.
18:45But for what?
18:49That man in a cap in front of Mitsuko, what's he doing?
18:54Why is this man touching his feet?
18:56And this container, what's in it?
19:02And there, a man lifts his head, looking for something.
19:07He appears to have a shaved head.
19:09What is he waiting for?
19:11That is Mr. Tsuboi.
19:15He is the other person in the photo who's still alive.
19:18His testimony is precious, because he knows exactly what everyone's doing there, on the Miyuki bridge.
19:29Mr. Tsuboi's face still bears the scars of the 6th of August 1945.
19:35He was 20 years old.
19:36On that day, he's just had breakfast with some friends and is walking along the street.
19:43When the bomb explodes, he's three quarters of a mile from ground zero.
19:49The radiation burns his face.
19:52His back is bleeding, and he looks for medical aid.
19:55In the street, he sees one man holding his own intestines in his hands, another with his eye hanging out.
20:02In the face of all this horror, he gives up on getting to the hospital and heads for the bridge.
20:09According to Mr. Tsuboi, everyone on the bridge had come there to tend to their burns.
20:16They brought rapeseed oil there.
20:21It's a cooking oil.
20:23You couldn't put it on everyone.
20:25So, people were daubing themselves as best they could, with their arms in the bucket.
20:30So, that canister on the ground is full of oil, an emergency first aid remedy for burns.
20:43The man in the foreground with a cap and in uniform, Mr. Tsuboi tells us, is a member of the civil defence,
20:50who'd been instructed to treat burns cases in this way.
20:53Further back, in a uniform of a lighter shade, another man from the temporary first aid post is doing his best at this thankless task.
21:04But there are just too many people, too many burns, and the precious rapeseed oil soon runs out.
21:16It's replaced with thick, dark sump oil, hastily appropriated from the nearby train depot.
21:21They started using that because at least it was oil.
21:30They covered themselves in it, and their faces were getting all black.
21:34They really looked like monsters.
21:35But it's not enough.
21:39Here in this makeshift hospital, some are simply running out of strength and starting to give up on life.
21:47Over to one side, a young girl is doubled over, her arms covered in dreadful burns, exhausted by the pain.
21:55And we can make out the legs of others, who just lie there, at death's door, with no strength left to fight.
22:16There was nothing more to be done.
22:19Those who were going to die, died.
22:21The others kept on living.
22:26There on the Miyuki Bridge, Mr. Tsuboe feels his end is near.
22:32His identity papers are all burned.
22:35So he's worried that if he dies, his body will never be identified.
22:39Never return to his parents.
22:42As the dying people around him look on, he scratches a message on the bridge with a stone.
22:47Thinking my life will end at 20.
22:53It was a lonely feeling.
22:56Thinking no one will help me, I wrote, Tsuboe is dying here.
23:00Lonely.
23:01Maybe futile would be a better word.
23:09We were hardly capable ourselves of moving.
23:14So, how could we do anything for those people there, on the ground?
23:28Those who were dying said, Mother, Father.
23:30And then died.
23:32Many people died at Miyuki Bridge.
23:33Many people came to the Miyuki Bridge in search of aid and of comfort.
23:55And many just came there to die.
23:58This summer of 1945, the children have been sent away from the city for fear of bombardments.
24:14The youngest ones were the first to go.
24:16Yet many of the wounded in Yoshito Matsushige's photos look like children or teenagers.
24:28Here, a young girl with long hair.
24:31Beside her, a boy with a shaven head.
24:33These girls and boys along what was the parapet, they're wearing school uniforms, surely.
24:46And back there.
24:48This boy, half naked and alone.
24:52What's he doing there?
24:56Did all Hiroshima's school kids meet up here at the bridge?
24:58On the Miyuki Bridge, I don't remember who was sitting alongside me.
25:05But they looked like school girls and boys.
25:09Maybe 7th, 8th graders, judging from their satchels.
25:14Most likely they were college students.
25:18Mitsuo Kodama, who was 13 at the time, pays his respects to all the children from his class who never had a chance to grow up.
25:31The bomb goes off just half a mile from his school.
25:41Like all his classmates, he has terrible radiation burns and he faints.
25:48But the fact that there were schools back at Ground Zero doesn't of itself explain the large number of children on the Miyuki Bridge.
25:55The kids are a year older than me, wore off to work in the factories.
26:12Japan is at war, and the men are all off at the front.
26:16Behind the lines, life goes on.
26:18From the age of 12 or 13, teenagers are drafted into all sorts of duties.
26:25The girls contribute to the war effort by working for the post office or as tram conductors.
26:32This August, though, Hiroshima's young are needed for a much more important and dangerous task.
26:38To prevent fire bomb attacks, buildings were being torn down and spaced out.
26:46So we were doing something that was totally useless.
26:51These young people are working for the army now, retrieving stones from the buildings to build fire barricades.
26:59And swelling the ranks of young people scattered all around the hypocenter.
27:03In a radius of just over a mile from the blast, there are more than 8,000 of them.
27:10Many students were mobilized.
27:1360% of those within 1,000 meters of the epicenter, like myself, were killed.
27:17For some years now, Professor Keiko Otani has been charting the age of the victims of the Hiroshima bomb.
27:24Her studies confirm the survivors' testimonies and the conclusions drawn from Yoshito Matsushige's photos.
27:35At Hiroshima on the 6th of August, 22% of the victims were adolescents, most of them between 13 and 14 years old.
27:45When you see from this diagram that so many innocent children died, it drives home the awfulness of the situation.
27:58On the morning of the 6th, 13-year-old Shioko Kuwabara is helping with the demolition work.
28:11She has a tummy ache, and she's lying under a tree when the bomb goes off.
28:16With serious wounds to her face, she flees along with her classmates towards the Miyuki Bridge, where she finds a lot of other children.
28:24We were still kids, so all we wanted was to go home.
28:31So we were only thinking about getting home.
28:35On the bridge, the children don't know where to go, so they just wait.
28:44I'll never forget what we went through.
28:49Kuwabara is one of just a handful to make it this far unharmed.
29:04It makes me cry when I think of them waiting there for their family to come to find them.
29:09I always feel so sorry for them.
29:24The children's lives hang by a thread.
29:27It's not enough just to have reached the bridge.
29:30They're still in grave need of help.
29:32For the military, it's out of the question that Japan surrender.
29:45In the inferno that is now Hiroshima, their first priority is to save the vital resources to carry on the fight.
29:52The fire that's consuming the city is getting dangerously close to the Miyuki Bridge.
30:07For everyone fleeing the blaze, the bridge has in fact become the border between life and death.
30:12More and more victims of the blaze are starting to arrive.
30:23Eyewitness testimony has made it possible to reconstruct what's going on around the edges of Yoshito Matsushige's photos.
30:32It's an endless ballet of military vehicles.
30:35Relief efforts are being organized to get the burns victims to the hospitals that haven't been destroyed.
30:40Goro Takuchi is a 22-year-old army cadet stationed in a suburb of Hiroshima.
30:49He sees a searingly bright light fill the sky and hears a huge dull thump.
30:55Half an hour later, along with a hundred other soldiers, he sets off to help evacuate the victims.
31:01When he gets to the Miyuki Bridge, he is shocked by the orders he's been given.
31:06He ordered me to give priority to military men.
31:13Women and children were not important.
31:17Children, women and the elderly were considered weak.
31:21Only young men were allowed to ride.
31:23Only young men were allowed to ride.
31:28In a deathly silence, and under the eye of the wounded waiting stunned on the bridge, the evacuation begins.
31:41Young soldiers were still a valuable part of the war effort.
31:45And I think that's why this order was given.
31:51To win the war required people who could hold a gun.
31:57Women couldn't shoot.
32:00So women and children were thought to be of little use and had to wait.
32:05They had to join the queue.
32:08When I first received the order, I thought that made sense.
32:13But the situation at Miyuki Bridge brought me to my senses.
32:17I couldn't just rescue the military personnel.
32:20In the midst of all the chaos on the Miyuki Bridge, everybody's trying to stay alive.
32:27A little girl goes up to a truck to beg for help.
32:32I still remember his voice. It was stern and without compassion.
32:38It really scared her that he shouted at her and she started crying. She was just a little thing.
32:50And then she rushed off.
32:54Alone, no idea where she's going, the girl heads back into the blazing heart of the city.
33:00There were flames everywhere. And I could see the whole city burning up.
33:09What happened to her? She died, of course.
33:13Even adults couldn't survive. So what hope was there for a little girl?
33:16How many children came to the Miyuki Bridge on that Monday, the 6th of August, only to disappear again?
33:40Like that little girl who's forever burned into Mr. Tsuboe's memory.
34:00Rie Kutsuki is very familiar with Yoshito Matsushige's two photos.
34:04Since her early childhood, she's grown up with a strange certainty once shared by her whole family.
34:12There, in the photo, right behind the man applying the oil, a little boy with a shaven head stands with his back to it.
34:21He's clearly there in this photo. So why did he never make it back?
34:27I was told my grandparents heard the same question from people many times.
34:31For the whole family, there was never any doubt. This boy here is Uncle Akira.
34:42His unusually shaped ears are the indisputable proof.
34:46He's never been found. But one day my grandmother came across this famous photo.
34:51And she recognized her son, Akira, even from the back.
35:00Akira, the brother of Kutsuki's father, is at school when the nuclear mushroom cloud blooms over Hiroshima.
35:06He's alone, and he tries to get home. He's pulled along in the rush towards the Miyuki Bridge, where Yoshito Matsushige photographs him.
35:21He's clearly there in this photo. So why did he never make it back?
35:30When a huge number of people all die at once, you can never know what happened to each one of them.
35:39That's the cruelty of war. And the atomic bomb.
35:58Hiroshima. An entire city wiped out in a fraction of a second.
36:02Thousands of lives brought to a sudden end.
36:06Bit by bit, thanks to the photos of Yoshito Matsushige, it's been possible to trace how events unfolded that Monday morning.
36:34But what do we know of the actual suffering people endured under the cloud?
36:41Dr. Harada is a surgeon at Osaka Hospital.
36:45He's also a specialist in emergency medicine.
36:48And he can shed new light on Matsushige's photos.
36:55Their hair is burnt, as well as their clothes.
36:59So they must be burnt all over their bodies.
37:01I think it wasn't.
37:07A series of details strikes him straight away.
37:13In Dr. Harada's opinion, all the victims in the photo show characteristic symptoms of very serious burns.
37:19This can be seen from the parts of their bodies that are overexposed in the photos.
37:29It's not the kind of burn you get today in the normal course of our lives.
37:34When a person is exposed to radiation from an A-bomb, the skin absorbs the rays and gives off heat.
37:40And the burns are all the more intense because the victims were lightly dressed for a summer day.
37:50So many parts of their bodies weren't protected by clothing.
37:54So it was a very deep and serious burn.
38:01That was a surprising revelation.
38:06Indeed, when an A-bomb goes off, the temperature will cause hair to frizz.
38:12The skin is burned very deeply.
38:16Very rapidly, enormous blisters form, which then burst, leaving the flesh exposed.
38:26The nerve endings are thus in direct contact with the air.
38:30The pain the people suffered would have been the worst pain a person could ever experience.
38:46They were saying, Mommy, it's hot, it's hot.
38:49Were their hands held out.
38:51There were people walking like this with their hands out.
38:54They were walking slowly, but walking.
38:56I was wondering why their clothes were hanging off their arms.
39:02But in fact, it was their skin.
39:07That's what I found out at the hospital.
39:12The skin had peeled off.
39:14The reddish flesh was exposed.
39:17And that too was burned.
39:21Their skins turned outward and fluid was oozing out.
39:24When you grill fish, the skin shrinks.
39:30It was like that.
39:33Mitsuko Kochi's father is there on Miyoki Bridge, too.
39:37He has very bad burns on his arms.
39:40I held this side of him, saying, Are you alright?
39:44Then from here, the skin peeled completely off.
39:49It was his hand.
39:50Hand.
39:52The skin came off and it looked so watery.
39:55Mr Kochi's burns are characteristic of burns from a nuclear weapon.
39:58The heat of the explosion burns everything in its path.
39:59It's power is such that it leaves imprints of things on the ground, on the walls, like the shadow of death.
40:00It's power is such that it leaves imprints of things on the ground, on the walls, like the shadow of death.
40:01It's power is such that it leaves imprints of things on the ground, on the walls, like the shadow of death.
40:06It's power is such that it leaves imprints of things on the ground, on the walls, like the shadow of death.
40:10It's power is such that it leaves imprints of things on the ground, on the walls, like the shadow of death.
40:15Any hospital left standing is submerged by the victims of serious burns.
40:22The effects are beyond the power of human imagination.
40:25It's power is such that it leaves imprints of things on the ground, on the walls, like the shadow of death.
40:29Professor Hassai is a physicist.
40:56Professor Hassai is a physicist.
40:59Like Dr. Harada, he has been studying for a long time
41:02the consequences of the atomic bomb.
41:04He too has remarked on the severity of the victims' burns.
41:10In the data gathered by the American army,
41:13the burns victims were a hidden factor.
41:19Yes, because it was just too awful.
41:22If this had been made public before,
41:26the U.S. and the whole world might have reacted differently.
41:34But the U.S. prefers to keep quiet about suffering on this scale.
41:38What they want is to recuperate all their huge investment
41:41by developing the civil applications of nuclear power.
41:45And that means not scaring people.
41:48For a long time, all their studies on the effects of the bomb
41:51remain confidential.
41:55What these studies show are the victims of kelloids,
41:58a type of scarring characterized by extensive growths of flesh.
42:03It's a symptom presented by almost all the burns victims
42:06from Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well.
42:09Several reports have shown that outside the zone,
42:17hit by the wind from the explosion,
42:19the number of victims who died from burns was considerably higher
42:23than the number of those who died instantaneously inside the zone.
42:28When little boy explodes at 815, nobody yet knows what the consequences will be.
42:40Oppenheimer himself, the architect of the bomb,
42:43estimates 20,000 dead in the first second.
42:47There will be more than three times that number.
42:49Hiroshima, that was spared all the bombing raids,
42:52is therefore a reliable choice for testing the destructive power of this new weapon.
42:58When in September 1945, US scientists arrive in Japan with the occupying army,
43:04they seize all photos, medical records and samples taken by doctors since the 6th of August.
43:11To handle all this information, an atomic bomb casualty commission is set up.
43:22Under the cover of medical care for the people of Hiroshima,
43:25a great deal of information is collected,
43:27all intended for a proper inquiry into the effects of the blast.
43:33Everything is noted down, photographed, archived and classified top secret by the US military.
43:41Beyond the confines of the ABCC,
43:43Japanese doctors are under permanent surveillance by US military police.
43:48They are not to ask too many questions if they don't want to lose their license.
44:00Throughout the whole Hiroshima region, the burns from the bomb are filmed.
44:04But sometimes mere images are not enough.
44:11Kuchi's father too turns to the ABCC.
44:17When he dies, his son wants to recover his body.
44:18My brother asked me to contact the ABCC.
44:19And I found out that my father's body had been preserved in formaldehyde.
44:20He'd been dissected.
44:21He'd been dissected.
44:22And I found out that my father's body had been preserved in formaldehyde.
44:23He'd been dissected.
44:24Kuchi's father's body had been preserved in formaldehyde.
44:25He'd been dissected.
44:26And I found out that my father's body had been preserved in formaldehyde.
44:27He'd been dissected.
44:28Kuchi's father's body had been preserved in formaldehyde.
44:32He'd been dissected.
44:35Kuchi's father too turns to the ABCC.
44:37Kuchi's father too turns to the ABCC.
44:39When he dies, his son wants to recover his body.
44:40My brother asked me to contact the ABCC.
44:43And I found out that my father's body had been preserved in formaldehyde.
44:47He'd been dissected.
44:48Kuchi's father too turns to the ABCC.
44:51By four days after the blast, a strange sickness is raging.
45:18Vomiting, bleeding, decomposition of the flesh, hair loss, the Hiroshima Plague.
45:27The inhabitants are learning of the effects of radioactivity.
45:32Dozens of women will give birth prematurely in the rubble of the still-burning city.
45:37Takeshi, the military cadet, will help deliver them of their stillborn babies.
45:44But the newborns I saw weren't the normal red, they were white.
46:00They have a name for the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts.
46:05The hibakusha. They are suffering from burns, but also from the effects of the radioactivity, cancers, leukemia.
46:15In Japanese society, to have the status of hibakusha gives you access to a pension and to free medical care.
46:21But it soon turns on the victims.
46:25People are afraid of the hibakusha.
46:27The women will give birth to monsters, the men are all sterile.
46:31Already suffering the guilt of still being alive, the victims find themselves having to hide away,
46:36or to keep their terrible secret, for fear of being ostracized.
46:40This, in the truest sense, adds insult to injury.
46:47A third person in Matsushige's photos prefers to remain anonymous.
46:53This woman is still alive, but she doesn't want to be named.
46:59I didn't want anyone to know either, but my brother insisted because our father is in the photo.
47:08For a long time, to avoid their children and grandchildren being stigmatized,
47:15the hibakusha have preferred to keep quiet.
47:22The people from the Miyuki bridge want to die in peace, as if the bomb had never blown their lives apart.
47:32Some people need to forget, others need to remember.
47:47Every morning, at the exact hour that little boy exploded, a bell rings out through the streets of Hiroshima.
47:58And every 6th of August, at 8.15am, the whole city shuts down and welcomes people from all over the world to celebrate peace.
48:06Like many other survivors, Mr Tsuboe has lived in the shadow of the bomb.
48:26Like many, still being alive has given him a mission.
48:31The Miyuki bridge isn't just where all those injured people went.
48:35For me, it's where the rest of my life began.
48:40It was like a rebirth for me.
48:48On the Miyuki bridge, in an instant, Tsuboe, Koushi, Nishioca, Kodama and all the others lost their innocence.
48:57It shouldn't have happened.
49:04I mean, that endless line of burned victims.
49:08It's like I'm watching something I shouldn't.
49:16And like Takeshi, they all want their lives after the 6th of August, 1945, not to have been in vain.
49:27After we die, there will be no one left to tell these stories.
49:44I have to do whatever I can do, as long as I live.
49:48To pass it on to the young, it has been my duty to remember it all and collect all the documentation I could.
50:05I want them to understand the true value of peace and never to forget Hiroshima.
50:11That's what I want.
50:14Yashito Matsushige passed away in 2005, but these photos are now part of our collective memory.
50:32They are a homage to the 210,000 victims of the Hiroshima bomb, as well as the one that fell on Nagasaki three days later.
50:42They are a rare testimony to that Monday, the 6th of August, 1945, and to what they all suffered, those men, women and children caught in the hell of the nuclear blaze under the cloud of Hiroshima.
51:01So that humanity may never see its like again.
51:31They are the pithole with no one, they are a temple with no one.
51:32They were there.
51:33They were all in vain.
51:37They are a mishper, and they're the other people have a very large number of illegitimate.
51:38They are all about to be in vain.
51:43They know the truth.
51:48They are all about to be in vain, but they are about to be in vain.
51:53In the past, they see the other people who are in vain.
51:56You
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