Choosing Life: My father’s journey from Hollywood to Hiroshima is nearing release. This new book offers readers never-before-published eyewitness accounts from an American cinematographer, Herbert Sussan, who participated in creating the only color film record of the actual effects of the atomic bombing and from the survivors whom he filmed. Yet the United States government, which originally directing the film to be made, withheld it from the American people.
The author, Leslie A. Sussan, went to Hiroshima originally to carry out her father’s last wish to scatter his ashes at Ground Zero. Once there, she too felt a deep bond with the city and the hibakusha (bomb survivors) who committed themselves to sharing their stories with schoolchildren and visitors in hope that such a bomb would never again be used against human beings. After a year living as part of the community in Hiroshima, she had collected those accounts and felt their power. The tragedy and resilience come through on a human scale in this recounting.
