'Not enough about the horror': atomic bomb survivors on Oppenheimer as it finally opens in Japan

It is hard to think of a more emotionally charged venue than Hatchoza for the first screening in Japan of the Academy Award- winning fi lm Oppenheimer. The cinema in Hiroshima is located less than a kilometre from the hypocentre of the first atomic bombing in history – the devastating culmination of the American physicist’s work.

- Justin Mc Curry

The film finally premiered in Japan yesterday, more than eight months after it opened in the US , to reviews that ranged from praise for its portrayal of J Robert Oppenheimer – the “father of the atomic bomb” – to criticism that it omitted to show the human misery it caused in Hiroshima and, days later, Nagasaki in the final days of the Pacific war.

Instead, the film details a haunted Oppenheimer’s struggle to justify Harry Truman’ s decision to use the bomb and, in the then president’s eyes, bring to an end an increasingly costly war against an enemy determined to fight to the death.

“There could have been much more description and depiction of the horror of atomic weapons,” said Takashi Hiraoka , the 96-year-old former mayor of Hiroshima , who attended a special screening this month. “From Hiroshima’s standpoint, there wasn’t enough about the horror of nuclear weapons, but I would encourage people to go and see it.”