flying over Hiroshima, 1945....

[Guest guest]

heard excerpts read on the radio today....pretty dang moving....

remember when it use to be said "never again"...folks have dang short memories

 

Radio Reading of 'Hiroshima' Speaks to a New Generation

 

By Paul Farhi

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 6, 2003; Page C01

 

Tyne Daly was born a year after the first atom bomb fell on Hiroshima, but

she remembers the worldwide shadows it cast: the practice air-raid drills,

the

duck-and-cover exercises, the generic Strangelovian foreboding.

 

She's not so sure, however, that a younger generation really understands,

particularly when phrases like "weapons of mass destruction" have been

ground

into cliche. "We've been spoon-fed so many images of things blowing up in

the

movies and on TV that it may have blunted our palate for the truly

horrific," the

actress says.

 

Hence, Daly's latest project: a two-hour radio adaptation of "Hiroshima,"

John Hersey's landmark journalistic account of the bombing of the Japanese

city

on this day 58 years ago.

 

The former "Cagney & Lacey" star (and current "Judging Amy" co-star) heads a

cast that includes Ruby Dee, Roscoe Lee Browne and Daniel Benzali. It airs

today on Pacifica Radio's five U.S. stations, including Washington's WPFW-FM

(89.3), at 10 a.m., part of a day-long series of Hiroshima commemorative

programming on the public station.

 

The actors play -- actually, "give voice to" is more accurate, for this is

less a play than a dramatic reading -- the six survivors of the Hiroshima

blast

on whom Hersey centered his 31,000-word account. Daly voices the experiences

of a young Japanese war widow with three small children; Benzali is a German

missionary; and Browne is a Japanese doctor thrown into the hellish

aftermath of

the American attack. Dee provides connecting narration.

 

Hersey intentionally wrote his story -- which was published in the New

Yorker

in August 1946 and later became a best-selling book -- in a flat, almost

dispassionate style, which emphasized the nearly unimaginable misery and

devastation he recorded. This tone is reflected in the restrained, often

grave reading

of the actors.

 

Benzali, for example, lowers his hoarse and cracking voice to a near-whisper

when he reads the account of the priest encountering burned and desperately

thirsty men: "Their eye sockets were hollow, the fluids from their melted

eyes

had run down their cheeks."

 

The "Hiroshima" adaptation was the brainchild of Los Angeles actor John

Valentine, Daly's brother-in-law. Valentine, 63, was playing poker with some

young

friends in February when the conversation turned to the prospect of a second

Gulf War. When one member of the group expressed his fondness for "showing

our

muscle," it occurred to Valentine -- as it did to Daly later -- that young

people had no real reference point for such sentiments.

 

"I realized that evening that perhaps a generation or two had never read

'Hiroshima,' " which used to be required reading in high schools, he said.

"I

thought it was time for a reality check."

 

So Valentine set to work modifying Hersey's work for radio, with the

approval

of Hersey's daughter Brook, who oversees her father's estate (Hersey died in

1993 at the age of 78). With Daly using her clout to round up actors (all

worked without pay), Valentine pared down the narrative. He also served as

another

narrator.

 

The project was first pitched to National Public Radio in Washington earlier

this year, but it was rejected for what Valentine and Daly characterize as

"political" reasons. NPR disputes this account, saying it was a question of

timing.

 

"It was NPR's sense that this was a pitch that clearly represented a

reaction

to looming events [the Iraqi war], and from a news perspective it was

premature," said spokeswoman Jenny Lawhorn.

 

Pacifica -- a public radio chain founded by Quaker antiwar activists in 1949

-- eagerly embraced the idea, providing recording and editing help through

its

Pacifica Radio Archives in Los Angeles.

 

Ideally, Valentine said, the production will "start some conversations and

debate." He recognizes, of course, that one of the debates might be about

what

some consider the perversely humanitarian nature of the bombing. In other

words, the deaths of roughly 175,000 in the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima

and

Nagasaki three days later may have saved lives, given that Japan's nearly

immediate surrender spared both sides a catastrophic invasion of the

Japanese

homeland.

 

Hersey certainly recognized this, including in his story a letter from a

Jesuit priest musing on the human tradeoffs inherent in "total war."

Valentine's

adaptation leaves this coda intact, preserving the chillingly murky meaning

of

Hiroshima, and of "Hiroshima."

 

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Guest guest]

Good idea - it was a truly horrendous event.

 

Jo

 

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