A documentary to be shown in a Tokyo theater soon depicts atomic bomb survivors in a Nagasaki nursing care home coming to grips with their experiences 67 years ago.
Katsumi Sakaguchi, the 57-year-old director of "Atomic Bomb Home," visited the Megumi no Oka nursing care facility outside Nagasaki over a two-year period from 2009 to document the lives of residents.
The home was established to care for atomic bomb survivors.
Sakaguchi was intrigued that the elderly residents stage plays on occasion to re-enact their experiences as youngsters when an atomic bomb leveled the city on Aug. 9, 1945.
Three or four times a year, groups of young students from across Japan visit the home on school excursions to interact with the survivors. The elderly residents, some in wheelchairs and others relying on canes for support or assisted by nursing staff, utter their lines with conviction, and often with tears streaming down their cheeks, as children watch.
More than 40 of the 137 residents who featured in the 95-minute footage have died during the three years since filming started.
"This movie has become the last will and testament for some people," Sakaguchi said. "I want people to see how the residents insist they don't want to die until they have conveyed their experiences."
The film will be shown at the Shibuya Uplink theater in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward from Aug. 11. Call Go Cinema Inc. (03-6861-5050), the distributor, for more information.
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