The film “Oppenheimer” finally premiered, Friday (29/3), in a country where two cities were destroyed 79 years ago by nuclear weapons discovered by American scientists who were the subject of the Oscar-winning film. The reactions of viewers to the film were varied and very emotional.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima when he was three years old, said he was fascinated by the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, often called the “father of the atomic bomb” for leading the Manhattan Project.
“What the Japanese were thinking, when they launched their attack on Pearl Harbor, was starting a war they never expected to win,” he said, with a hint of sadness in his voice, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press news agency.
He's now head of a bomb victims' group called the A- and H-Bomb Sufferers' Organization, and he watched Oppenheimer at the pre-show. “The whole film, I waited and waited for the Hiroshima bombing scene to happen, but it never happened,” Mimaki said.
Oppenheimer does not directly describe what happened on the ground when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reducing some 100,000 people to ashes immediately, and killing thousands more in the following days, mostly civilians.
This film actually focuses on Oppenheimer as a person and his internal conflicts.
The film's release in Japan, more than eight months after its US release, was viewed with uncertainty due to the sensitivity of the subject matter.
Former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka, who spoke at a pre-show event for the film, was more critical of what was not in the film.
“From Hiroshima's perspective, the horror of nuclear weapons cannot be adequately depicted,” he was quoted as saying by Japanese media. “This film was made to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save American lives.” (lt/ab)