After the Cloud Lifted tells the story of the Hiroshima atomic bomb and its aftermath, through the lives and recollections of a dozen survivors. Employing well-edited interviews and graphic footage of the devastation left by the bomb, the video focuses not on the political issues or on questions of blame but on the human experiences of the event: the physical and emotional costs, the humiliation of disfigurement, the acts of forgiveness and recovery that occurred over the next three decades.
The story is divided into eleven brief sections: Before the Bomb; Day of the Bomb (shown through a combination of photographs and cartoons); Art and Recovery; Dealing with Disfigurement; Hiding from Humiliation; Fighting Famine; Rags to Riches; Black Market; Preserving History; Befriending the Enemy; and A New Vision. Some, like Rags to Riches, narrate experiences of postwar financial success that have little apparent connection to the atom bomb story, while others (eg., Hiding from Humiliation) provide gripping accounts of personal tragedy and psychological triumph.
Most effective are the personal stories. Keiji Nakazawa, creator of the widely-read cartoon strip, Barefoot Gen, gives an almost unbearable account of the way his father, brother and sister burned to death, trapped beneath fallen timbers, while he and his mother stood helplessly by. Koko Tanimoto Kondo, a Christian minister's daughter, recounts the surge of forgiveness she experienced several years later when, angry and bent on revenge, she met a co-pilot from the Enola Gay, and heard him recount his own horror on seeing the destruction from the sky. "I saw his tear; my whole attitude changed," she said.
Though the film footage from 1945 is graphic and disturbing, contemporary shots sometimes are stereotypical or over-dramatized. And while the film commendably avoids blame and easy generalizations about the war, the sections on peace and reconciliation sometimes dip into cliches, a certain American-centrism.
At the same time, the film raises many of the fundamental questions that students and civic groups will want to discuss: whether Japan would have used the bomb if it had had it; how the Japanese teach children about the war today (though one wishes the counterpart question about American education were also broached); whether the war and the bombs should be forgotten or remembered; what is required for the recovery of psychological health.
After the Cloud Lifted is likely to be most effective in middle and high school classes, as well as in some civic groups. While the scenes of destruction and suffering might be useful in introductory college and university courses, the issues are too thinly treated for wide use at that level.
