DUE10012

COMMUNICATIVE ENGLISH 1

SESSION 1:2022/2023

Group Assignment: Documentary Review

Title: The Effects of the Bomb: Hiroshima Nagasaki

Source: https://youtu.be/eFalyguyRAU

Prepared By:

Name Registration Number Class

JASON ADRIAN LWIN 07DKA22F1038
NOEL THOMAS RAYNER 07DKA22F1004
NEIL BRYNDAN WEE SUPITANG 07DKA22F1010 DKA1A
IMAN ZULHAKIM BIN SAID 07DKA22F1030
 EFFECTS OF THE HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI ATOMIC BOMBING

‘The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki’ brings the story about the
horrors of the atomic bombings in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. It was
documented in mainland Japan by an American Mission team which objective is to report the
destruction brought by the atomic bomb shortly after the surrender of Japan in WW2. The
documentary is based on a real-life situation where towards the end of WW2, the United States
Manhattan Project which was a research and development undertaking during World War II that
produced the first nuclear weapons, successfully created the world’s first ever atomic bomb.
They decided to drop two atomic bombs on Japan to bring the war to a speedy end and spare
American lives. On August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima,
the 7th largest city in Japan with a population of 245,000. Within a fraction of a second of the
detonation, a powerful blast wave scoured the landscape and some 70,000 people were killed
instantly, and by the end of the year the death toll had surpassed 100,000. The second bomb,
which was a more destructive one, was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Although it has
more power than ‘Little Boy’, the casualties were lesser with 40,000 people killed instantly and
30,000 more would succumb to their injuries and radiation poisoning by the end of the year.
Personally, we think the purpose of the documentary is to show us how devastating the
consequences of war can be with innocent civilians becoming the victims of human nature for
conflict.

Other than that , we think the issues the director wants to get across the audience is about
how powerful atomic bombs is in terms of destruction and radiation and how it’ll cost an
abundance of innocent lives if fallen into the wrong hands. One of the characters in the
documentary is Father John Siemens who is a professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University
of Tokyo. He said in his interview that on the morning of August 6 th, he was in his room which
faces the valley when suddenly, he saw a light like magnesium light and before he knew it, he
was covered with splinters from window frames and glass, but when he looked closely, it was his
flesh.
Before we watched the documentary, we already knew a thing or two about the subject. We
knew that the bombs dropped are the first ever atomic-bomb attack in history and that the
Japanese actually admired American engineering because they did not have any aircraft in their
armory that could counter the American B-29 bomber.

One of the main things that we like about the documentary is how detail the storyline is.
For example, during the 26:05 minute, the narrator described the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms
work that extended almost a mile in length and it’s buildings were modern and on par to the
American industrial construction, having steel frames, roof and sliding of corrugated metal or
asbestos. This is a fascinating fact to us because in that era, Japan does not have the industrial or
technological might that could compete with the US and the fact that the narrator described it
like that shows how far Japan had come from their feudal and primitive country to an
industrialized based country that could compete with major European powers at that era. On the
other hand, the things that we dislike about the documentary is how the sound quality is quite
disappointing with the voices, background sound and bass all being hard to listen to. We also
don’t like how the documentary is in black and white colour which for us, is quite boring and we
can’t really feel the message of the documentary without colours to depict what is really
happening. The moral values that we learned is that we should help other people in need, for
example, in the documentary it mentions about people going into Nagasaki after the explosion to
do rescue work even though they have to go trough rubble of ruined building and encounter
countless dead bodies. The other moral value is not harming others. The bomb that was dropped
cost thousands of deaths of innocent lives and this is something very unpleasant and should serve
as a reminder to us not to take another person’s life for granted. The thing that surprised us the
most is how the people that suffered burns from the atomic bomb ray has very severe wounds
that made them look almost like a living corpse which is a very disturbing sight for us. We
would recommend this documentary to our friends because it shows a real life event where the
horrors of atomic bombing is documented in full detail to give the audience a mixture of
disturbing and fascinating feeling.