Chronicling history: 'A Commitment to Peace' tells the story after atomic bomb ended World War II

The Manhattan Project in New Mexico was front and center in 1945.

In nanoseconds, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II changed the nature of warfare and how nations would relate to each other.

War reached its zenith.

Chronicling history: 'A Commitment to Peace' tells the story after atomic bomb ended World War II

In a New Mexico PBS series, “A Commitment to Peace,” it looks closely at how the following dramatic Cold War years were complicated by personalities, ideologies, old fears and new visions.

Michael Kamins was at the helm of the 2002 project.

With a renewed interest in the subject due to “Oppenheimer” and its success, the documentary will air at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 21, on New Mexico PBS, channel 5.1. It will also be available to stream on the PBS app.

Kamins says the documentary takes viewers on a time travel trip from 1946 through 1963 and focuses on the journey of the evolving sophistication of nuclear weapons and how it resulted in an urgent need for getting control of the arms race and for peace among nations.

Featured are top nuclear physicists including Harold Agnew and Herbert York, who served as directors of the top nuclear weapons labs at Los Alamos and Livermore, California.

Also participating are top historians including Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes.

Survivor of the atomic bombing in Japan, Shigeru Aoki poignantly describes the horrors he witnessed.

“The documentary is as relevant today, as America again grapples with national defense issues,” Kamins says. “This important history provides valuable insight into the need for peace in a highly technological world.”

Kamins says when he originally went out to work on the documentary, he wanted to go to the source.

“I wanted to capture what their experiences were like,” he says. “Everyone focuses on Oppenheimer. There were more people involved in the entire project. It’s an amazing story and there were plenty of New Mexicans who worked on it. It really is a fascinating history which is also terrifying too.”

“A Commitment to Peace” is one of the many documentaries that is also free to stream by the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

The organization digitized the New Mexico Public Media (NMPM) Collection, which brings together more than 8,000 items from public media stations across the state, including full television and radio programs, as well as interviews and footage documenting New Mexico’s social, political, artistic and cultural history between 1963 and 2020.

As part of the collaboration, five stations, coordinated by New Mexico PBS, worked to digitize programs that resided on obsolete and deteriorating audio and video formats, making accessible historic public media from an underrepresented region. The collection includes programs by Indigenous producers, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentaries, bilingual and Spanish language series, Vietnam War protest coverage and more.

“What a relief! New Mexico truly is an extraordinary place,” Kamins says. “I am so grateful we were able to preserve and share the amazing, diverse voices and stories found in our respective archives. They will not be lost to time.”

Thousands of programs in the NMPM Collection are now available to stream online since their initial broadcast.

The series include KNME’s “Colores!,” a weekly newsmagazine about New Mexico’s creative spirit; and KUNM’s National Indian Council on Aging, a collection of public service announcements in Navajo, Zuni, Lakota and other Indigenous languages; Peabody Award-winning KNME documentary “Surviving Columbus” and its raw footage, created by Indigenous filmmakers about the Pueblo people; footage and news reports from the penitentiary and Monuments to Failure: America’s Prison Crisis, a 1987 examination reported by Tom Wicker on the state of penitentiaries in five states including New Mexico; KUNM’s “La Chicana,” an exploration of what it means to be a Chicana feminist; KUNM’s UNM Strike Documentary with coverage of six days of protest against the Vietnam War at the University of New Mexico in 1970; KRWG’s regional Emmy Award-winning documentary series “Crossing,” an examination of border crossings; and “Report from Santa Fe,” broadcast weekly for nearly 40 years and featuring conversations with notable people living in or visiting New Mexico.

SEND ME YOUR TIPS: If you know of a movie filming in the state, or are curious about one, email film@ABQjournal.com. Follow me on Twitter @agomezART.