After Avatar will James Cameron make a film about Hiroshima?

I saw this in the news this morning, Cameron's next movie could be about Hiroshima:

After Pandora, director James Cameron's next film could be about a new book that follows a handful of Japanese who were lucky – or unlucky – enough to survive both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.

Charles Pellegrino, author of The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back, said the survivors' shocking story could make it to the big screen in 3-D. It is the result of lengthy research, including extensive interviews with the survivors and those who dropped the weapons towards the end of the Second World War.

He and Avatar director Cameron met one such person, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, not long before he died earlier this month aged 93, and Pellegrino believes it is their duty to commit his story to film. "Mr Yamaguchi called us to him, literally to hold hands with him and gave us each this assignment [of making the movie]," he said.

This is rather interesting, but I have mixed feelings about it. There has been more than one movie that has covered this in Japan. I don't have anything specific in mind, but usually around the time of the anniversary there are both movies and animation that deal with the topic on TV in Japan, just like Moses used to always be shown on TV in America before Easter.

When I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum many years ago, there were very young elementary children outside being instructed to draw pictures that gave their impression of the museum. There were a lot of really grotesque pictures based on recreations that they had seen in the museum. These children will probably never be taken to a museum in China and shown what Japanese did while they were there, and then subsequently asked to draw pictures about it. (Think about it, should Japanese children be asked to draw pictures of comfort women being raped or people being massacred in Nanking?)

In the museum the actual articles, like melted bicycles and so, just looked old to me, and not particularly terrible or impressive. There were several wax figures that showed people with skin peeling off of them and so on. There were videos of interviews and footage taken after the explosion.

When I left the museum there was by chance a reporter there doing a story for the local NHK affiliate in Hiroshima. I was asked what I thought about the atomic bombing. You know, sort of standing there in the middle of a bunch of young kids drawing gruesome pictures of what America had done to Japan. I was well aware of the various controversies and different viewpoint surrounding the bombing, but had never studied the issue carefully. I didn't want to commit to any particular viewpoint. So I deferred and said all war is bad, and we should all strive to avoid it. It was a pretty evasive and weak answer, but I was told I'd be on the news at 6:00.

One thing that strikes me is to what degree many individuals view these issues through a nationalistic lens. Through a nationalistic lens we all remember the sins committed against us by them, but those committed by us against them are quickly forgotten (or explained away -- justified). If we view these happenings through the lens of individualism, very quickly the blame falls on the institution of the state itself. Nationalism and nationhood great games to be waged by those who should know better. Maybe some day we'll learn.