Documenting Hiroshima of 1946: In April, U.S. survey team films people and cityscapes in Hiroshima
Apr. 5, 2025
by Maho Yamamoto, Staff Writer
In April 1946, a film crew from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey Team continued its filming work in Hiroshima City. Herbert Sussan, a photographer on the crew who died in 1985 at the age of 63, recorded scenes of the city and people affected by the bombing using both color film footage and still photographs.
Mr. Sussan stayed in Hiroshima for around two months between March and April that year. During that time, he filmed such scenes as the return of A-bomb victims’ remains to bereaved families at Hiroshima City Hall, as well as Yorozu Bridge with its remaining traces of the A-bombing’s thermal rays. At Hiroshima Teishin Hospital (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward), located around 1.4 kilometers from the hypocenter, he led hospitalized patients, whose bodies still showed scars from the atomic bombing, to the hospital’s roof where he took their photos.
Suzuko Numata, 22 at the time, had had her thigh amputated due to a wound on her injured left ankle that never healed. Because Ms. Numata was requested by Michihiko Hachiya, director of the hospital, to “offer your cooperation” to Mr. Sussan, she wore a kimono and walked to the roof on crutches. A nurse removed the bandage from her leg, revealing the amputation. Despite her embarrassment, she was filmed by Mr. Sussan, who remarked to her, “You must have been in so much pain.”
Leslie Sussan, 72, Mr. Sussan’s oldest daughter who lives in the U.S. state of Maryland, said that her father had wanted to record human beings and convey what the atomic bombing had wrought. Mr. Sussan aimed at making a movie to convince Americans that the United States should stop its involvement with nuclear weapons. However, after he returned to America, the film footage he had accumulated over the period of his stay in Japan was classified as “confidential material.”
Mr. Sussan sent a letter to then U.S. President Harry Truman demanding that his film footage be released to the public, a wish that never came to fruition. To the contrary he received a proposal from the government suggesting that his film footage be used to produce a documentary for military purposes as educational material for the next war. That prompted him to resign from the military in 1947, after which he worked for many years as a television producer.
The film footage Mr. Sussan took was stored at such facilities as the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. That film footage saw the light of day because of “The 10 Feet Film Project,” a grass-root effort that began in the early 1980s to purchase such footage from the United States based on donations from Hiroshima citizens, with the aim of producing a documentary movie about the atomic bombing.
(Originally published on April 5, 2025)
In April 1946, a film crew from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey Team continued its filming work in Hiroshima City. Herbert Sussan, a photographer on the crew who died in 1985 at the age of 63, recorded scenes of the city and people affected by the bombing using both color film footage and still photographs.
Mr. Sussan stayed in Hiroshima for around two months between March and April that year. During that time, he filmed such scenes as the return of A-bomb victims’ remains to bereaved families at Hiroshima City Hall, as well as Yorozu Bridge with its remaining traces of the A-bombing’s thermal rays. At Hiroshima Teishin Hospital (in Hiroshima’s present-day Naka Ward), located around 1.4 kilometers from the hypocenter, he led hospitalized patients, whose bodies still showed scars from the atomic bombing, to the hospital’s roof where he took their photos.
Suzuko Numata, 22 at the time, had had her thigh amputated due to a wound on her injured left ankle that never healed. Because Ms. Numata was requested by Michihiko Hachiya, director of the hospital, to “offer your cooperation” to Mr. Sussan, she wore a kimono and walked to the roof on crutches. A nurse removed the bandage from her leg, revealing the amputation. Despite her embarrassment, she was filmed by Mr. Sussan, who remarked to her, “You must have been in so much pain.”
Leslie Sussan, 72, Mr. Sussan’s oldest daughter who lives in the U.S. state of Maryland, said that her father had wanted to record human beings and convey what the atomic bombing had wrought. Mr. Sussan aimed at making a movie to convince Americans that the United States should stop its involvement with nuclear weapons. However, after he returned to America, the film footage he had accumulated over the period of his stay in Japan was classified as “confidential material.”
Mr. Sussan sent a letter to then U.S. President Harry Truman demanding that his film footage be released to the public, a wish that never came to fruition. To the contrary he received a proposal from the government suggesting that his film footage be used to produce a documentary for military purposes as educational material for the next war. That prompted him to resign from the military in 1947, after which he worked for many years as a television producer.
The film footage Mr. Sussan took was stored at such facilities as the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. That film footage saw the light of day because of “The 10 Feet Film Project,” a grass-root effort that began in the early 1980s to purchase such footage from the United States based on donations from Hiroshima citizens, with the aim of producing a documentary movie about the atomic bombing.
(Originally published on April 5, 2025)
