Atomic People: harrowing BBC documentary about Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The survivors of the nuclear bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known in Japan as "hibakusha", said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. This "deeply moving, quietly devastating" BBC documentary marries archive footage from the time with interviews with a handful of survivors, who are now octogenarians "at least".

Shigeaki, who was eight in 1945, remembers a young woman swaying as she walked towards him while clutching her internal organs. Chieko, then 15, recalls seeing a group of schoolchildren with what "looked like long strands of seaweed hanging from their waists. It was the skin of their legs peeling off." Another survivor says that the noise of insects always reminds her of "the voices of the dying who begged her for help and water". The documentary is, at times, "almost unbearable" to watch, but these witnesses "are asking us not to look away". 

After Japan's surrender, talk of the bombing (and criticism of the Americans) was forbidden, and hibakusha were regarded with shame, said Christopher Stevens in the Daily Mail. Their relief at being able to talk openly is "palpable" here; and though their stories are harrowing, "this is our last chance" to hear them. 

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The documentary is more than just a "perspective-shifting history lesson", said Dan Einav in the FT. "By confronting us with the horrors of what they experienced, the hibakusha provide us with the most urgent, unflinching and unequivocal warning possible about where nuclear escalation may lead."