Oppenheimer Oscar leaves bad taste

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The Oscar for Oppenheimer has received world wide acclaim, except for one city.
Hiroshima was devastated by the first nuclear bomb in 1945, the film about the weapon’s creator is hard for residents of the city to stomach.
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/a ... 6056d947db
“Is this really a movie that people in Hiroshima can bear to watch?” said Kyoko Heya, president of the Japanese city’s international film festival, on Monday after the blockbuster won seven Academy Awards including best picture.
Around 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki when the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities, days before the end of World War II.
Yu Sato, a 22-year-old student at Hiroshima City University, said she felt “a bit scared” about how bomb survivors and their families would react to the Oscar-winning film.

“I have mixed feelings, to be honest,” said Sato, who works with the survivors through her studies.

“Oppenheimer created the atomic bomb, which means he made this world a very scary place,” she said.

“Even if he did not intend to kill many people, he cannot be seen as completely unaccountable.”

Pretty much the same sentiment I feel about Hollowood making a movie about a second American Civil War...

Hypothetical? or is this a movie about Jan 6?

Hypothetical scenerio from what I understand. But given all the crazies in our own government saying they want to succeed or start another civil war in the name of the orange messiah...

I make no apologies for saying such a movie is in extremly poor taste.

Yes its a sobering thought that Trump will get his small hands on the nuclear launch codes again.

I couldn't care less about the movie. Or the Barbie movie. Or really live-action movie that's been made since the 1990s, actually.

But I can understand why people in Japan don't want to be reminded of something that was beyond horrific that the Americans did to them. Although they do have that anime movie Barefoot Gen, and oh ye gods.

https://youtu.be/pSFvLWihAFc?si=HMA9JWUcaEmAC0jH

That could be "us" at any time, now.

There is some concern whether Oppenheimer's life might have been glamorised for television? Not the first time controversial figures have been re-written for cinema.

Younger Japanese might not be aware of the reasons why a nuclear bomb had to be dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

I haven't seen the movie so I can't speak about it authoritatively, but my understanding from people who are pacifists and opposed to the horrors of war and especially the particular horror of nuclear weapons is that the movie did not address this adequately -- the horror and the wrongness of any use of nuclear weapons -- and should therefore find opposition from all quarters, not just from the direct victims of the worst nuclear attack in history.

Surely you're not saying that it was right or necessary to drop a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

This has been debated for decades so I don't want to bring back all the reasons why/why not. The reason the US chose nuclear is that the Japanese imperial army was using suicide as a tactic to kill US soldiers. The estimated death toll to US and allied troops entering Japan was considered so high that dropping a nuclear bomb was a lesser evil.

Can't we just admit that the US really screwed the world over in the longrun by intoducing the atom bomb into the world and making us all less safe?


Of all the things people love to hate my country for even I would agree with that.

I think the original plan was to use against the Nazis. You have to remember the Germans were on the verge of developing a nuclear bomb so technically the US had no choice. Infact the Manhattan project was funded eight months after the allies declared war in Germany and long before Pearl Harbour.

when oppenheimer said to president Truman (in the oval office) that he (oppenheimer) "had blood on his hands," Truman had him thrown out.

Actually, the movie deals with Oppenheimer's guilt and regret for what happened to Hiroshima. That was not ignored.

I don't see the issue really.

I can understand the older generation of Japanese being unhappy with the movie. It maybe cuts too close, but for younger Japanese I am not sure they really care? It's a movie about some Gaijin.

Without the nuclear bomb, how long would the fighting have continued?

I seem to remember reading that they expected a million deaths in a ground war on Japanese soil. I'm not positive that is correct, though.