Do we risk forgetting what it means to 'push the button'?

RACHAEL POPOW finds out more about a new film on the legacy of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945

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In August 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The recorded death tolls are estimates, but it is thought that about 78,000 of Hiroshima’s 350,000 residents were killed instantly, and that at least 40,000 of Nagasaki's 240,000 citizens died on impact.

The long-term consequences would be harder to measure. The US set up a commission to research the medical effects of the bombings, but it would take decades to discover the toll the bombs had taken on the fertility of the city’s residents as well as their mental and physical health.