WHEN NOBEL IS USED AS A POLITICAL TOOL

HE Japanese hibakusha movement began in 1956, a decade after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombings, when the survivors decided to band together to inform the world about the sheer brutality of nuclear bombs. Nihon Hidankyo, a federation of hibakusha organisations, was founded that year, at the second World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs held in response to ongoing US nuclear tests.

- KAJAL BASU

This year, 68 years later, Nihon Hidankyo was given the Nobel Peace Prize—which it has richly deserved for at least half a century. The hibakusha, who in July 2017 ratified the adoption of a proposed 'Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons', have a long, storied history. This is how it began.

Days after the bombings in August 1945, photographers from a Japanese newsreel service, Nippon Eigasha (Japan Movie Corporation), shot extensive black-and-white footage in the two cities. The US then sent in First Lieutenant Daniel McGovern to make colour films. He was conscientised by what he saw as the inscrutable sufferings of the Japanese. Later that year, the US military halted filming by Nippon Eigasha.

In March-April 1946, Americans seized the Japanese newsreel team's footage for shipment to the US. McGovern was ordered back to the mainland in June 1946. He later told NBS—in its revelatory November 2023 documentary, Atomic Cover-Up—he “hand-carried to the US the negative and a print of the Japanese black-and-white film”. He was told “this material could not be released to the news media nor to the general public”.

The Japanese newsreel footage remained buried until 1970, when a 16-minute film titled Hiroshima-Nagasaki: August, 1945 was aired on US public television. But McGovern's own colour footage, 90,000 feet of it, remained unseen. In February 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission classified the footage as 'Secret', then elevated it to 'Top Secret'.