＊マンハッタン計画を描いたドラマ「Manhatt(a)ttan」のレビューを、15日の終戦記念日に合わせまず英語で配信させて頂きます。日本語版も、合わせてまとめますので少しお待ち下さい。
Finally, after almost 70 years.
I couldn’t help but utter these words in Japanese when I first saw the sign for the T.V. series ‘Manh(a)ttan’ standing on the subway platform. I somehow felt relieved and tears welled up in my eyes with the hope that the show would create an opportunity to take another look at history.
When it comes to war, it is difficult to see things from others’ perspectives, let alone overcome our own biases. Change, however, can at least be seen in U.S. diplomacy. Ambassador John Roos became the first U.S. representative who attended the Hiroshima memorial ceremony in 2010. This year, Ambassador Caroline Kennedy also visited Hiroshima for its 69th anniversary. It was not her first time, as her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy had brought her to the memorial back in 1978.
Unfortunately diplomacy is not on people’s minds as they go about their daily lives. They may read the newspaper about what happened that day, but what they read can easily be forgotten. In that regard, a T.V. show is more approachable and powerful. It catches people’s eyes and captures their hearts with their vision, and suffering of the scientists, families and people around them.
The opening of the very first episode was quite gripping, The words ‘766 days before Hiroshima’ instantly grabbed me. What appeals to me most is that the show does not focus on the passion to build a whole new bomb that could end the war right away and curtail the daily killing of young soldiers.
In one of the main characters Frank Winter, a scientist who leads an underdog team of scientists, yells at his team to finish designing the atomic bomb, while writing on the board ‘37855’ – the war’s death toll as of that day.
In his race to the finish, Frank suffers from insomnia and dreams that his family nearly dies from an atomic bomb. He ends up seeing a doctor, who uses a Geiger counter to check Frank’s radiation exposure. Frank’s intelligent and supportive wife finds herself wondering why certain white flowers turned purple.
The conversation Frank has with his young rival, Charles Isaacs, on July 4th is stabbing. Charles asks Frank ‘What about the next war? What happens when Stalin’s got one [atomic bomb)? China? The Shah of Iran? ‘ Frank doesn’t answer and throws out the cigarette.
The show does not hesitate to depict a soldier who just came back from the war front in the Pacific. When an Asian scientist with a sick child steals classified documents from the Army in the hopes of obtaining a patent and selling its rights to pay the medical bills, the soldier, unaware of the scientist’s situation, shoots him in the head as he attempts to escape from the facility, merely for his resemblance to the Japanese enemy.
The show does use some harsh language including some racial epithets that were used at that time in history for Japanese and Germans. The scientists in the facility are also seen screaming at one other in their race to build an atomic bomb.
The show does not focus on who is right or wrong, but instead imagines what could have happened in that nameless place in the middle of nowhere. And the punch line ‘Sacrifice a few to save many more‘ is interestingly not used in reference to Japan, but rather to the people who work at the facility.
Granted, the storyline is not entirely based on truth. But by depicting the scientists’ agonizing struggles in that time period, the show gives the viewer food for thought and perhaps some insight into what drove Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb” and leader of The Manhattan Project to oppose further development of the A -bomb after the war. The show also helps the viewer understand why on the eve of the 70th anniversary marking the end of WWII, generations continue to call for ‘No more Hiroshima’ and ‘Peace begins in Nagasaki’. This is why the show could be meaningful in our time, when conflicts still dominate the headlines.
（cover photo : examiner）
Comments
アメリカの家計債務にやっぱりちらつく、「Sワード」の影 Next Post:
ソロス氏、4−6月期はS&P500に弱気スタンス
about the author: Sawako
ttan‘ – Fictional , Yet Powerful And Unbiased.){kind=link}