The Ultimate Wish

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It raises profound questions about war, American foreign policy, technological failure, the courage to survive and the importance of taking positive actions to prevent future nuclear disasters.
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Prime focus is on Sakue Shimohira, age ten and hiding in a Nagasaki shelter when the nuclear bomb dropped on August 9, 1945. In one of the film’s most powerful moments Sakue describes her sister’s suicide ten years after the war ended as "the courage to die." Mrs. Shimohira found "the courage to live" and dedicate her life to abolishing nuclear weapons.

Takako Shishido, living in Fukushima at the time of the March 2011 nuclear power plants’ triple meltdowns, tells us what happened and what she would like to see happen now.

We follow Sakue in the company of two Japanese students as they talk to students in London, New York and Nagasaki. We also see Sakue in an unprecedented gripping encounter with a Nazi Holocaust survivor.

Other documentaries about the atomic bomb don’t include what is in this one:

* Challenge of the widely held U.S. assumption that bombing Nagasaki was essential for military victory.
* The Press Code, imposed by the U.S. occupation government, prohibiting Japan‘s media reporting on the bomb or its health effects.
* The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, a U.S. agency that gathered data from thousands of survivors, sent that data to the U.S.—not Japan—and did not attempt to ameliorate the health problems of the survivors.
* Crossing generations: an elderly bomb survivor accompanied by students who have taken up her cause.
* The link between the bomb and nuclear power plants.
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