Survivors recall horrors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki

NEW YORK - It’s hard to imagine HBO’s disturbing documentary on survivors of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan appearing on an American TV network 10 or 20 years after the event. Filmmaker Steve Okazaki tried — and failed — to make it for the 50th anniversary.

There’s apparently enough emotional scar tissue built up to allow HBO’s premiere of “White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” on Monday (7:30 p.m. ET), exactly 62 years after the United States detonated the first-ever nuclear bomb over Hiroshima. The second, and so far last, atomic bomb was dropped three days later. It ended World War II.

Why is the time finally right?

“History is always worth recording and if there is a moment in history that hasn’t been recorded and you’re in a place where you have the resources, you should do it,” said Sheila Nevins, head of HBO’s documentary unit. She hopes it becomes a document of record shown in schools.

The uncomfortable footage of cities reduced to rubble and grotesquely deformed survivors has received relatively little circulation because — unlike the well-recorded Holocaust — this was something done by Americans, Nevins said.

HBO and Okazaki also felt the same urgency experienced by “The Greatest Generation” author Tom Brokaw and Ken Burns, maker of PBS’ epic series on World War II coming this fall. People who fought and survived World War II are dying quickly now, and soon there will be no more eyewitnesses.

The film is built on stories told by 14 survivors, with childrens’ pictures depicting the bombing and footage of the injured that was banned from the public for 25 years. The American-born Okazaki interviews crew members who dropped the bombs and wondered whether they would escape before their planes were engulfed in the mushroom cloud.

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US War Crimes are Nothing New nor is revisionist History:Survivors mark 62nd anniversary of Hiroshima bombing

U.S. to let START nuclear treaty expire

The United States plans to let a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia expire in 2009 and replace it with a less formal agreement that eliminates strict verification requirements and weapons limits, a senior U.S. official says.
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START obligated Moscow and Washington to slash deployed strategic nuclear forces from approximately 10,000 warheads each to no more than 6,000 apiece by December 5, 2001. The accord also limits each side to 1,600 delivery vehicles, like intercontinental ballistic missiles.

As of January 1, Russia reported 4,162 warheads under START, and the United States claimed 5,866 warheads but these figures are not exact because of unique treaty counting rules.

Another pact, the May 2002 Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT), commits the two sides to reduce forces to 1,700-2,200 operationally deployed warheads by the end of 2012.

After that, neither side's forces will be limited and Russia is afraid the United States, which can afford a larger arsenal, will expand its cache, experts say.

Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association said the two sides should have less than 1,500 warheads each. Asked if Washington could accept such a target, DeSutter said: "Not at this point."

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