Antinuclear

How the USA Hollywoodised the bombing of Hiroshima

The Hollywoodization of the bomb had begun. Even in minor details, the film now justified the bombing…….. the White House demanded further changes; among them, deleting a reference to morally concerned scientists who favored demonstrating the bomb for Japanese leaders in a remote area before dropping it on a city……

WHITE HOUSE COVER-UP: How Truman Edited Hollywood’s First Movie About the Atomic Bomb,  The Nation, Greg Mitchell and Robert Jay Lifton, 4 August 2010,  “……Here’s a close-up look at the “coverup”–led by the Truman White House–of the first “Hiroshima movie,”  some of it based on material we were first to discover at the Truman Library in Missouri.

The Beginning or the End This controversial MGM film emerged, after many revisions — some demanded by the White House — as a Hollywood version of the official Hiroshima narrative

Early scripts raised doubts about the Hiroshima decision and portrayed the effects of the atomic bombing in a way that would have shocked many viewers, with Hiroshima pictured as ghostlike ruins and a baby with a burned face. The overall political message was alarmist and aligned with pro-disarmament scientists: It would have been better to lose half a million American lives “than release atomic energy in the world.”

Then something happened, and the sensibility of The Beginning or the End shifted radically. The decision to use the bomb, in revised scripts, was viewed as justifiable, even admirable. Now, after the bombings, no victims appeared — just a burning landscape observed from the air. Amazingly, Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, had secured the right of script approval — along with a hefty $10,000 fee — and played a vital part in reshaping the film. ……

The Hollywoodization of the bomb had begun. Even in minor details, the film now justified the bombing……..

Yet it was in the script’s central melodrama that the true message of the film was conveyed. Matt Cochran, a young scientist arming the bomb, prevents a chain reaction from blowing up 40,000 people on a Pacific island — and thereby exposes himself to a fatal dose of radiation. But just before he dies, Matt concludes that “God has not shown us a new way to destroy ourselves. Atomic energy is the hand he has extended to lift us from the ruins of war and lighten the burdens of peace.”……….

the White House demanded further changes; among them, deleting a reference to morally concerned scientists who favored demonstrating the bomb for Japanese leaders in a remote area before dropping it on a city……

Harrison Brown, who had worked on the bomb, exposed some of the film’s factual errors in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: he called the showering of warning leaflets over Hiroshima the “most horrible falsification of history.”…..

Greg Mitchell and Robert Jay Lifton first wrote about Hiroshima films in their book “Hiroshima in America.”

WHITE HOUSE COVER-UP: How Truman Edited Hollywood’s First Movie About the Atomic Bomb | The Nation

August 4, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | antinuclear, Australia, nuclear, nuclear weapons