{"id":45169,"date":"2023-12-22T07:27:07","date_gmt":"2023-12-22T15:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=45169"},"modified":"2023-12-22T07:31:35","modified_gmt":"2023-12-22T15:31:35","slug":"silent-night-in-nagasaki-christmas-1945","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/22\/silent-night-in-nagasaki-christmas-1945\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Silent Night’ in Nagasaki: Christmas 1945"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Decades before I started work on my award-winning documentary \u201cAtomic Cover-up<\/a>\u201d<\/em> in 2020, I had heard of the alleged episode: Japanese survivors of the second U.S. atomic bomb gathering in the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral\u2014the largest in the Far East\u2014in Nagasaki at Christmas to celebrate Christmas with songs such as \u201cSilent Night.\u201d I never expected to find a record of it, but ultimately, I did secure it and used it for the haunting opening of my film.<\/p>\n

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You can now watch the short version of my film<\/a> (27 minutes) for free everywhere at the PBS site or any PBS apps, or the full 52 minutes for free via Kanopy<\/a> if you have any sort of library card. But you can just click below now and watch that 90-second \u201cSilent Night\u201d segment below in this clip. Narration by my friend, the great Dennis Predovic.<\/p>\n

\u00bb\u00bbNOTE<\/strong><\/em>: The companion book for the film is on pre-holiday<\/a> sale for just $1.99 in its ebook form, also titled \u201cAtomic Cover-up<\/em>,\u201d updated this year with more than a dozen pages of material related to the release of \u201cOppenheimer<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n