Controlling the narrative

Eighty years after the beginning of the Atomic Age, discoveries remain.

Ben Loeterman has diligently worked for nearly five years putting together the pieces that have become the documentary, “Bombshell.”

With the help of American Experience, Loeterman and his team will premiere the film at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 6, on New Mexico PBS, channel 5.1. It will be available to stream after its broadcast.

“It’s pretty amazing that secrets were kept during this time and I’ve learned a lot,” he says. “Prior to this film, I had done a film about journalism that the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) had funded. My program officer called and asked what I was up to. I was reading a biography on my childhood hero John Hersey. I was asked to look into that and here we are.”

According to American Experience, “Bombshell” explores how the United States government manipulated the narrative about the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Through propaganda, censorship and the co-opting of the press, the government presented a benevolent picture of atomic power, minimizing the horrific human toll.

Loeterman says the documentary — which is narrated by Ann Curry — sheds light on the efforts of a group of intrepid reporters to let the world know the truth.

“This is a subject that resonates today as well, unfortunately,” Loeterman says.

The film begins on Aug. 6, 1945, as America’s secret superweapon destroys Hiroshima, a city of 300,000 inhabitants.

Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

The bomb was lauded for bringing about victory in the Pacific and ending World War II. President Harry S. Truman’s official announcement on the attack shaped the government’s official narrative.

“Sixteen hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese army base,” Truman is heard saying in the film.

The bomb was aimed at Hiroshima’s city center for maximum psychological effect, but the army base on the outskirts of the city escaped much damage.

According to the documentary, the U.S. media became pivotal in promoting — and then piercing — the official narrative.

While Truman publicly declared that “it has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or this government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge,” that is precisely what Gen. Leslie R. Groves, leader of the Manhattan Project, insisted upon. Groves’ strategy was a PR campaign fueled by press releases written anonymously by William L. Laurence, the science writer for The New York Times and an undercover member of the Manhattan Project team. Loeterman says Laurence’s assignment was to downplay the radiation effects from the bomb.

“When we began the research, there was plenty of material to go over. It became about litigating the choices to use the bomb,” he says. “We thought we could finish the film to roll out in parallel with the release of ‘Oppenheimer.’ We were able to finish it for the 80th anniversary (of the atomic bomb). I hope it sparks conversation again.”

Loeterman says not every journalist adhered to the official line.

Japanese American Leslie Nakashima, who had worked for the United Press in Tokyo until Pearl Harbor, was the first journalist on the ground in Hiroshima, going to the city to check on his mother.

Nakashima was stunned by the magnitude of devastation, as it was never reported as such.

Australian freelancer Wilfred Burchett evaded checkpoints to reach Hiroshima, while Chicago Daily newsman George Weller was the first American reporter into Nagasaki. The radiation poisoning Burchett witnessed was detailed in a front-page story headlined “Atomic Plague.” It was published in London and reprinted around the world, but Americans did not see it. Weller submitted his dispatches on the attack to Gen. Douglas MacArthur for approval, who confiscated them.

In August 1946, John Hersey’s article on Hiroshima, revealing the moral and human consequences, was published as an entire issue of The New Yorker, and the government’s official narrative finally began to crack.

The only on-the-ground photos to survive August 6 were taken by Hiroshima news photographer Yoshito Matsushige, but were confiscated after Japan formally surrendered. In 1952, LIFE magazine published the photos, allowing Americans to finally see the devastation.

“We hope that an audience takes away a more complex picture of what happened and how skeptical the press should be in doing the work,” Loeterman says. “There’s a lot to learn from this and we can’t take anything at face value.”