ABSTRACT
American films about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are rare. Considering the number of Hollywood films about World War II in general, the virtual absence of films dealing with the event that “ended the war” in the Pacific would seem to be an anomaly. From the beginning, Americans have rarely been shown the direct effects of the atomic bomb on the Japanese people. Images of atomic-blasted cityscapes, not too different from similar scenes of other war-torn cities that were the targets of so-called conventional bombing, are familiar. The debate over the morality and strategic necessity of using the atomic bomb on the largely civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to rage, and enrage, fifty years after the fact. The idea that the atom bomb constituted a transgression of the rules of wartime conduct has also been contested.
