The Non Violence International Film Festival 2008

The Last Atomic Bomb, a story of horror and hope, documents the life of Sakue Shimohira who was 10 years old in 1945, hiding in a shelter near ground zero when the bomb exploded. Her emotionally wrenching experiences are interwoven with rarely seen archival footage and never-told-before accounts of what happened to her then and in the years that followed. One of the film's most powerful moments is when she describes her sister's suicide as 'the courage to die.' Mrs. Shimohira, the survivor, found 'the courage to live' and dedicate her life to abolishing nuclear weapons.The Last Atomic Bomb interweaves Mrs. Shimohira's story with the still controversial decision to use the bomb on Nagasaki, the seven-year Press Code that barred any media reports within Japan about the bomb or its effects, discrimination against survivors by other Japanese, the Cold War build-up of nuclear weapons and today's growing nuclear proliferation issue.The film follows Mrs. Shimohira, now age 70, and two college students to Paris, London, Washington, DC and New York where they present letters to Presidents Bush and Chirac and Prime Minister Blair, inviting the government leaders to Nagasaki. In Paris Mrs. Shimohira shares memories in a moving encounter with an Auschwitz survivor. At the film's conclusion it is clear that the college students have become motivated to carry on Mrs. Shimohira's nuclear abolition message to young people around the world.