Foreign Correspondent: Season 2025, Episode 15

2025 - 15: Japan's Last Survivors: Remembering Hiroshima 80 years on

On August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb was dropped for the first time in an act of war on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.   It was one of the final and most famous acts of World War II following Japan's refusal to surrender in the face of overwhelming odds and enormous civilian casualties.  Eighty years later only a few Japanese civilian survivors remain. On Foreign Correspondent North Asia correspondent James Oaten meets the people who still have clear memories of those final months of World War II. Some survived the firebombing of Tokyo which killed 100,000 civilians, others remember the US invasion of Okinawa where another 150,000 civilians perished. And some are the last living survivors of Hiroshima. These last survivors are angry Japan, even today, still refuses to accept responsibility for the needless harm it caused its own people by not surrendering sooner. They know their time is running out and they want their country to confront its past before it's too late.