Lifting the Fog: The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

On August 6, 1946, the United States dropped the first ever nuclear weapon on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, another nuclear bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were killed in the explosions and countless others were disfigured, maimed and poisoned by the effects of the bomb’s radiation. Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?

Lifting the Fog: The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a provocative investigation into the motives that led to the building of the first atomic bomb and the decision to drop the bomb three months after the war ended with Germany. Using dramatizations based on the diaries and notebooks of the major participants in this momentous decision, including President Truman, Secretary of War Stimson and nuclear physicist Leo Szilard, the documentary presents the issues as they appeared to American statesmen.

The program also uses rare archival footage and includes interviews with Gar Alperovitz (author of Atomic Diplomacy), military historian Barton Bernstein, Col. Charles Bower, John Dower (author of War Without Mercy), historian Akira Iriye and nuclear physicist Philip Morrison, who was part of the Manhattan Project and one of the first Americans to visit Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped.