Who Won the War is a short documentary weaving interview, archive and
animation to tell the remarkable story of a Hiroshima survivor. In
1956, orphaned and partially blind, Takashi was invited by the
American Government to the United States to “regain his health”.
A second grader when the atomic bomb dropped, with six members of his
family dead of radiation poisoning, Takashi embarked for the U.S. at
18. As soon as he landed in California, Takashi realized that he had
been identified as an eligible subject for experimentation undertaken
by the ABCC (Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission) to understand the
effects of intense radioactive energy on the human body. Takashi's
story is different from many other Hiroshima survivors. It is the
journey of an angry young man whose misfortunes begin right after the
Hiroshima bombing. It's a story of revenge, and acceptance of the
past.
Biography:
Francesca Di Marco debuted as a documentary filmmaker in 2018 with The Woman All
Women Were, an award-winning film that
appeared in numerous international festivals. She is committed
to narrating stories that reconfigure the margins of the dominant
discourse. Who Won the War, her current project, is in fact
the attempt to deconstruct the official narrative of the aftermath of
the Hiroshima bombing written by the winners by giving voice to a
survivor, and to open up a space to heal his trauma. Francesca is the
author of the book "Suicide in Twentieth-Century Japan".
She holds a Ph. D in Modern History of Japan from SOAS University of
London, and a Postdoc from Yale University. Her research interest is
on collective and national narcissism and how it manifested in Japan
through interwar totalitarianism and modern suicide. She lectured on
the Asia-Pacific Wars and on History of Interwar Japan at Stanford
University, the UK, and Italy.
