I am about to tell you about a new and extraordinary documentary film, “White Light Black Rain” that is currently playing on HBO.

The film documents what many young people probably do not know and many others have pushed out of their minds. It is about the destruction of two cities in Japan at the end of World War II. This is what happened. In an effort to end the war against Japan, on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. One hundred forty thousand died. As if that were not enough, and because the United States did not get the quick response it wanted – unconditional surrender – on August 9 it dropped another atom bomb on Nagasaki, killing 70,000 more Japanese. Japan’s unconditional surrender followed almost immediately after the second bomb fell. This year is the 62nd anniversary of the destruction of those two cities. Over the years since the bombs fell, another 160,000 Japanese died from the effects of the bombs, mostly from radiation poisoning and any number of other maladies associated with what the bomb brought on those fateful days.

Directed, written and produced by veteran filmmaker Steven Okazaki, the film is, “White Light Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ” Though it first aired on August 6, 2007, it is still playing at various times on HBO, so check the listings. When I learned about the documentary I did not want to see it. Over the years, I had seen enough of the remarkable and horrifying pictures of the destruction, of the dead, and of those treated by medical teams soon after the bombings. I did not want to relive the horror. There is enough horror around us everyday. I did not need more. One night recently, however, I made myself watch the film, and as difficult as it was, I am glad I did. It should be required viewing for everyone.

Not everybody in Hiroshima and Nagasaki died on those momentous days. Many people were vaporized, yes vaporized. Not everyone was burned beyond recognition, though many were. There were survivors, many of whom were children at the time. The film is as much their story as it is the story of those who died. It is also the story of personal courage that allowed some of these survivors to stay alive, perhaps to tell how they lived in spite of how they suffered, and still do. Their powerful first person accounts of their lives and how they survived against tremendous odds are riveting. Yet, the telling of the stories is quiet, understated and dignified. Possibly the reason some lived through the conflagration is to be able to remind us, in a film such as this, how nuclear weapons can easily destroy cities and the people who live in them.

The images from those first days after the bomb fell are searing. It is hard to believe there was so much film, so detailed a photographic record following the mass destruction of those two cities. Watching the old film ably mixed with the contemporary interviews and then looking at the powerful, though simple drawings used as connective tissue in the early part of the film I found it hard not to weep.

Despite the images and reliving the horror in words and images, the film is unpretentious. It does not scream or raise its voice about the obscenity of nuclear warfare unleashed on the world August 6 and August 9, 1945. The pictures and testimonies, including those of a few Americans involved in the bombings, are so strong the film does not have to shout at us about how unspeakable the bombings were. That people could survive these many years after near total destruction and continue lives of unimagined difficulty makes almost many other survivor stories pale by comparison. In the end, I found the film uplifting.