James Cameron options Non-Fic book on Hiroshima

[Data Holmes]

http://www.empireonline.com/news/feed.asp?NID=26653

Yes, in his second news story of the day, Cameron has bought up the rights to Charles Pellegrino's soon-to-be published tome The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back.

Pellegrino's title chronicles two days during an after the atomic bomb drops, using eyewitness accounts from Japanese civilians and American pilots who survived the experience.

Interesting.

[Temis the Vorta]

Let's see him try to beat Grave of the Fireflies.

[Trekker4747]

And somewhere some studio salivates over making a billion-plus dollars.

[Data Holmes]

Trekker4747 wrote:

---

And somewhere some studio salivates over making a billion-plus dollars.

I was wondering what a Nuclear explosion would look like in Full 3-D Avatar like CGI.

[Jax]

A 3-D Nuclear explosion...blinds the audience literally

[Bloodwhiner]

I had not heard of the book, but it will be on my must read list for the near future. The movie? I'll wait 5 years for the download.

[Lookingglassman]

I might read it as long as it doesnt turn out to be "The evil US bombed the peace loving people of Japan". Sure, the innocent dude and chick running around Hiroshima didn't do nothing to us, but their leaders started the war and refused to end it so they got a kick in the teeth. I lay the blame solely on the feet of the Japanese government.

[Trippy]

^Then you need to read Truman's diaries. He played his part too.

I'll give this book a read before I think it would make a good movie.

[Bad Bishop]

Lookingglassman wrote:

---

I might read it as long as it doesn't turn out to be "The evil US bombed the peace loving people of Japan".

I fear that we will get exactly that. I'd like Cameron to expand the scope of the film to show how merciless Japanese soldiers routinely cut off the heads, hands, breasts and genitals of innocent people in occupied countries.

[sidious618]

I'd love to see a movie inside the Truman administration about dropping the bomb. Japan would've surrendered soon and even if they didn't their forces were decimated; a full scale invasion would never have been necessary. In reality Truman dropped the bomb to show the Soviets that they had the capability to create these weapons and that they better back off. Truman was always terrible when it came to dealing with the Soviet Union and this was just another example.

That said, the stubborness of the Japanese emperor not to surrender despite having essentially no army left was moronic.

[Bloodwhiner]

While Emperor Hirohito was not the innocent that many postwar historians have made him out to be, he also was not a strong ruler. Of the three Axis leaders, Hirohito was the weakest. the country was essentially being running by the military. After it became clear that he intended to surrender, he was nearly toppled by a military coup.

The droppiong of the bomb was primarily a political decision. It was to show Russia that the US did hasve the upper hand and would use it (Russia would have cakewalked over the US in a conventional war circa 1946). Secondly if he chose not to use and went ahead with the planned invasion, when word came out he and democratic party would have been through.

The book does not sound like an apologist book from the description and publisher note I read.

[Dusty Ayres]

sidious618 wrote:

---

In reality Truman dropped the bomb to show the Soviets that they had the capability to create these weapons and that they better back off. Truman was always terrible when it came to dealing with the Soviet Union and this was just another example.

I believe that the dropping of the bomb spurred the Soviets on to building their own bomb, in part because they (read: Stalin) were scared of the USA and wanted a deterrent. All that America did was start an arms race that we have problems stopping.

That said, the stubbornness of the Japanese emperor not to surrender despite having essentially no army left was moronic.

Which is why I can't understand the veneration he and his family still get in Japan; if any monarchy deserves to be got rid of, it's the Japanese one solely for what they allowed to happen in their name (although I think Tojo was mostly responsible.)

The book does not sound like an apologist book from the description and publisher note I read.

No, it's probably a true history book like those by Howard Zinn and Studs Terkel, the kind that Americans should be reading more of.

[J.T.B.]

sidious618 wrote:

---

I'd love to see a movie inside the Truman administration about dropping the bomb. Japan would've surrendered soon and even if they didn't their forces were decimated; a full scale invasion would never have been necessary. In reality Truman dropped the bomb to show the Soviets that they had the capability to create these weapons and that they better back off.

There is zero evidence that anyone in the Truman administration or the Joint Chiefs thought that Japan was going to surrender soon or that an invasion would be unnecessary. Defeated Japanese forces in the field had yielded remarkably few prisoners, they seemed to prefer to die, and civilian Japanese subjects in Saipan had jumped off cliffs when American forces took the island, all lending to serious questions about whether the Japanese people would ever surrender.

The B-29 fire-bombing campaign was already decimating Japanese cities, and the atomic bombs were an extension of that campaign. New and far more deadly , but an extension nonetheless. Of course there were other political and diplomatic considerations, there always are, but no credible evidence has been uncovered that Truman thought that the war would end without the bombing campaign and the invasion. His biggest consideration WRT the USSR was to get Japan to surrender before the Soviets got a bigger role in the Pacific war and a bigger claim on post-war Japan.

Truman was always terrible when it came to dealing with the Soviet Union and this was just another example.

Yeah, the Berlin Airlift, what an embarrassment!

That said, the stubborness of the Japanese emperor not to surrender despite having essentially no army left was moronic.

By August '45 there were enough Japanese soldiers in the home islands for over 60 infantry divisions, though they could only effectively arm about half that amount.

The emperor deserves blame, sure, but the Japanese government at that time was a dysfunctional balance between the emperor and the military. The emperor could have been assassinated or deposed in favor of a more hardline "no surrender" member of the imperial family, and in fact there were plans to do just that and it came close to happening. The a-bombs were a drastic enough new development in the war to allow the surrender/never-surrender stalemate in the war cabinet to be broken.

--Justin

[Gaith]

After seeing Avatar, the prospect of a 3D A-bomb experience... wow. That could be incredibly intense, and compelling cinema. I just wonder what the plot would be; the Titanic was one thing, but I'm not sure that this would allow for a mainstream against-all-odds romance...

[Kegg]

I've been to Hiroshima. It's a nice city; there's a memorial, very solemn.

Gaith wrote:

---

I just wonder what the plot would be; the Titanic was one thing, but I'm not sure that this would allow for a mainstream against-all-odds romance...

He is a morally conflicted American grunt.

She is a Japanese victim of the A-bomb.

It's Cameron doing Hiroshima, the screenplay writes itself as a magic formula for printing money.