Profiles of People Featured in the Film
(in order of appearance)

Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon
USA Senator Hatfield was a young naval lieutenant who was part of the first occupying forces in Japan after the surrender following the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He had also seen action against the Japanese during the war. After the war he became a University lecturer and politician. He is one of the longest serving Republican Senators in the USA.

Greg Mitchell
Greg Mitchell is a New York based journalist and co-author of "Hiroshima in America".

Lt Col Daniel A. McGovern
Lt Col McGovern was a young lieutenant who, like Senator Hatfield, was one of the first outsiders to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bomb was dropped. He was also part of the film department of the occupying forces and was responsible for taking charge of the Japanese film crew who took the only atomic bomb footage in August and in the months afterwards. Lt Col McGovern made his own copy of this unique film footage. Twenty years later the CIA had lost their original copy and McGovern revealed his copy.

Isao Aratani
A survivor of Hiroshima. Isao was 12 years old and part of the class of 12 and 13 year olds who were on the streets of the centre of Hiroshima helping to widen the streets so that there would be fire breaks in the city to prevent devastating fires from conventional bombs which had destroyed large areas of Tokyo. Over two thirds of these schoolchildren died from the atomic bomb attack.

Takeko Nakayama
A survivor of Hiroshima. Takeko was 22 years old and on the outskirts of the city when the bomb was dropped. Her mother and sister and brother-in-law were in the family home in the city. Her mother was trapped in the house with the fires around her and she told Takeko's sister to run away and save herself. Her last words to her were to tell Takeko "Have a good marriage". Takeko describes returning to the house the next day to find her mother and brother-in-law's remains. Takeko met her husband soon afterwards - he is Dr Nakayama, also interviewed in the film - and they have been happily married for over fifty years.

Michiko Yamaoka
Michiko, like Isao, was with her classmates in the city of Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped. Her friend saw the plane that was about to drop the bomb and pointed to it. Michiko looked up and at that moment the bomb exploded. Michiko was rescued by her mother who did not recognize her burnt body but recognised her daughter's voice. In the 1950s Michiko had multiple plastic surgery operations on her face and body from the burns. Her friend did not survive. Michiko gives talks to schoolchildren.

Miyoko Matsubara
Miyoko was also a schoolgirl when the bomb was dropped. Miyoko, like Michiko, has had multiple plastic skin operations and has also had radiation-linked cancer. Miyoko now gives talks to schoolchildren at the Hiroshima Peace Museum about her experiences and has travelled to schools in Europe and USA to give talks.

Yoshimi Matsushige
Yoshimi was a news photographer and took the only photos of Hiroshima on the morning the bomb was dropped.

Dr Nakayama
Dr Nakayama treated the Hiroshima survivors and witnessed the acute and long term effects of radiation in the patients. He is married to Takeko Nakayama.

Dr Neriishi
Dr Neriishi works at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima. This is an American-Japanese institution, it took over from the controversial American Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission which was set up in 1951 to analyse the effects of the bomb on the survivors.

Keiko Ogura
Keiko was a little girl when the bomb was dropped. Her father was responisble for burying the burnt corpses in the immediate aftermath and he never spoke about his experience. Keiko runs the Hiroshima Interpreters for Peace (HIP) who were invaluable in this film project.

Dr Martin Harwit
Dr Harwit is an astrophysicist and was head of America's Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC when a fiftieth anniversary exhibit of the plane that dropped the bomb over Hiroshima, the Enola Gay, was being planned. In the film Dr Harwit talks about the controversy and abandonment of this exhibit which led to his resignation.