FILM: Nuclear Ginza (1995)

Röhl, Nicholas. 1995. Kakusareta Hibaku Rōdō: Nihon no Genpatsu Rōdōsha. 隠された被曝労働 – 日本の原発労働者 物語 [Nuclear Ginza]. YouTube video, 30 min, posted by “aikoku369”, Mar 30, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC7sFNtGk4A

Nicholas Röhl, a student of Japan’s master director Imamura Shohei, produced this 30-minute documentary in 1995 for Channel 4. The film exposes how Japan’s nuclear energy industry used disadvantaged people in the 1970s and ’80s to carry out highly dangerous manual labor inside their power stations. The story follows the photojournalist/ anti-nuclear activist Kenji Higuchi as he exposes the exploitation of the “untouchables” who were pulled out of the slums of Tokyo and Osaka in order to work while exposed to radiation, often without their knowledge. Referring to the tacit cooperation and close ties between the Japanese government and the country’s nuclear industry, a man notes in one scene that “democracy has been destroyed where nuclear power stations exist.” The film shows how Japan, having suffered nuclear attacks in the past, remarkably transformed itself within a few decades into one of the most “nuclearized” nations worldwide. This documentary film has special significance in the light of the recent Fukushima nuclear crisis, in which media reports about the exploitation of unskilled laborers in the plant spawned a major controversy.
– Christian Dimmer

Note: These videos may require you to open a separate browser window.

NUCLEAR GINZA, PART 1 of 3

NUCLEAR GINZA, PART 2 of 3

NUCLEAR GINZA, PART 3 of 3

FILM: A Is For Atom (1953)

Urbano, Carl, John Sutherland Productions. 1953. A is for Atom, YouTube video, 15 min, posted by “nuclearvault,” Jul 30, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi-ItrJISQE

This animated short was sponsored by General Electric, one of the key U.S. manufacturers of electric appliances, power generation stations, and nuclear weapon components, in an effort to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The film belongs to the genre of so-called “benevolent atom” films that were released during the 1950s as part of the “Atoms for Peace” campaign. A Is For Atom is an artifact of an era characterized by a strong narrative of belief in science and in technological progress. The potentially threatening nuclear technology is presented to the public in a “humanized” fashion, with elemental forces being depicted as humanoid figures such as Dr. Atom, who has an atom for a head. In a key sequence, the film introduces the five atomic “giants,” which “man has released from within the atom’s heart”: the warrior and destroyer, the farmer, the healer, the engineer and the research worker. Each of these giants is depicted as a majestic figure, towering over the earth, bringing progress and limitless growth to the world. The viewers are reassured that ”all are within man’s power and subject to his command,” that our future depends “on man’s wisdom, on his firmness in the use of that power.” –Christian Dimmer

Various versions of the film document can be downloaded at the Internet Archive or at the Open Video Project.

Note: This video may require you to open a new browser window.

FILM: A Is For Atom (1992)

Curtis, Adam. 1992. A is for Atom, Google video, 45:51 min, accessed Apr 24, 2011, from http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1860517361048002456

The British 45-minute documentary A Is For Atom was named after the 1953 animated short of the ‘Atoms for peace’ campaign with the same title. The final installment of a BBC-2 series about politics and science, called Pandora’s Box, the film tells the story of the development of peaceful nuclear technologies in the United States, Britain and Russia, and how political and business forces of the time contributed to these transformation. In order to make the production of nuclear power plants profitable, for example, private corporations like Westinghouse and General Electric pushed for the construction of bigger plants in order to utilize economies of scale. However, with growing reactor sizes, safe operation could no longer be fully guaranteed. The film shows that despite repeated warnings by senior scientists from the Atomic Energy Commission  and the industry itself, the corporations succeeded in avoiding costly changes to the plant design. In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, political pressure for a rapid electrification of the country coupled with an insufficient budget resulted in inferior reactor designs, which ultimately culminated in the Chernobyl disaster. One of the most unsettling scenes of the film unfurls as AEC scientists state as early as 1964 that “we have found in our present study nothing. . . which guarantees either that major reactor accidents will not occur or that protective safeguard systems will not fail. Should such accidents occur very large damages could result.”  What they refer to are evocative of the problematic design issues of the very type of nuclear reactor that would be used later in the Fukushima No.1 plant that came into operation in 1971.
– Christian Dimmer

A 10 minutes longer version of this documentary is available on the blog of director Adam Curtis

FILM: Various British Pathé Newsreels (1952 – 1962)

Footage from the following three short newsreels were selected in order to show the prevailing anti-nuclear sentiment in parts of the Japanese public during the 1950s and 1960s. At the height of the protests against the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan (anpo jōyaku) in 1960, hundreds of thousands of Japanese took their anger to the streets in front of the National Diet. Considering such background, it may be hard to grasp at first why relatively few protesters have rallied against nuclear energy during the height of the Fukushima nuclear crisis so far. To put things into perspective, in the period of time immediately preceding Fukushima, fewer than 50 people would have typically demonstrated at any given time; the demonstrations of 10 April 2011, in which approximately 17,500 people marched in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan, thus marks a dramatic increase. However, comparing contemporary demonstrations with those seen in the newsreel footage shown here, or with concurrent demonstrations in Germany this spring that have attracted 250,000 protesters, Japan’s protest movement remains comparatively small. How did what seems a largely uncritical acceptance of nuclear energy in Japan come to the fore?  –Christian Dimmer

British Pathé. 1957. Atom Fear Stirs Japan. Video, from British Pathé video film archive, http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=66625

Opening with the remarkable line, “radioactive rain brings new fears to atom-conscious Japan,” this snippet shows the strong public concern over British and Russian nuclear tests that have caused radioactive rain in Japan. Over 15,000 protest in front of the British embassy and umbrellas become a sales hit.

British Pathé. 1957. Jap Protest. Video, from British Pathé video film archive, http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=32824

“Stop the tests,” demonstrators in Tokyo demand in the aftermath of American and Russian nuclear tests. The strong anti-nuclear sentiment is further heightened by Britain’s announcement to also begin with hydrogen bomb tests. Subsequently, protests by “Japs,” as the announcer describes (a term that gained a derogatory connotation during World War II, now considered an ethnic slur), are staged in front of the American, Russian and British embassies in Tokyo.

British Pathé. 1962. Ban The Bomb Demonstration in Tokyo. Video, from British Pathé video film archive, http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=62269

Various scenes show a small group of students who protest the United State’s plan to resume nuclear tests in the atmosphere. The political bias of this Cold War newsreel is noted by the caricature of the demonstrators in which “leftists protest atom tests,” resisting the police with ”fanatical left-wing zeal.”

FILM: Tale Of Two Cities (1946)

United States War Department. 1946. Tale of Two Cities. YouTube video, 12: 03 min, posted by “nuclearvault,” Sep 5, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPvYw9cm8GY

This short 12-minute film, produced by the U.S. War Department, begins with the Trinity nuclear test in the desert of New Mexico in July 1945. Accompanying the picture of an atomic explosion, the narrator announces that on that day “the atomic age was born.” Shortly thereafter, the destructive forces of the atom are unleashed against civilian targets, for the first and only time in history: the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As if describing a scientific experiment, the narrator takes the viewer on a tour through the ruins of the two devastated cities. It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that the fresh impression of the horrific effects of the atom on the two cities and their people gave way to a strong opposition movement in early postwar Japan. This skepticism and fear would also obstruct the introduction of the peaceful use of nuclear energy in later years. –Christian Dimmer

Note: This video may require you to open a new browser window.



Various versions of the film document can be downloaded at the Internet Archive