Nagasaki, The Last Station (2025)

 

Unexpected opportunities arise. This past year opened the door for showings of the film Nagasaki Journey (produced in 1995) for this year’s 80th commemoration of the atomic bombings —in New Mexico as a test and dropped on the two cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The new showings emerged from a living room presentation of Nagasaki Journey that I initiated in my hometown of Santa Fe. That led to a presentation of Nagasaki Journey and the feature documentary, Dark Circle, at a theater in Los Alamos, one block away from where the atomic bomb was assembled to be dropped on Nagasaki.

Word spread. The International Uranium Film Festival requested that they present Nagasaki Journey in Rio de Janeiro, where the film won the Festival’s Memory Prize, and onward with their touring exhibition in Berlin, Window Rock in the Navajo Nation, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

My participation in the Nagasaki Journey activities came out of my own pocket. The presentation in Los Alamos alone required three separate test screenings over the course of three weeks to fine-tune the theater projection system.

During this same time period, I completed a short film that returned to California’s Central Valley to explore the question of why are there no rocks in the Central Valley. Every rock was brought in by a human being. The film, entitled, Tulare – Land Without Rocks, financed again out of my own pocket with the support of modest and always encouraging donations, has been viewed 97 thousand times on my YouTube channel.

The first film in my California water series, Tales of the San Joaquin River, has been viewed 278 thousand times since I launched the channel last December, available around the world at no charge to any viewer.

With this newsletter, I am announcing the release of a new film to my YouTube channel, a continuation of the Nagasaki Journey exhibition, book, and film. Nagasaki, The Last Station, tells the story of a photograph—a photograph taken of a nurse caring for the wounded and dying the day after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki—and blends this story with the story of the photographer, Yosuke Yamahata, who took the photograph and was the focus of the Nagasaki Journey exhibition.

Expect the unexpected is the theme. And how does one fund opportunities that arise in the moment, without detailed planning months ahead of time—and yet projects that are rooted in the reality of more than fifty years of filmmaking and presenting these films?

I pose that question to myself. And I ask for your support as I look forward to more activity and opportunity with existing films, as well as launching new films in the early stages of development: a film about the creation of Hawaii from lava to forest embracing the human stories of people today, and a film about wild horses that seeks to locate and film simple acts of human kindness toward horses, people, and our environment.

I will be out there working and wonder if you might join me as supporting participants who will receive full acknowledgment for the presentation of existing films and on-screen credit for future projects.

The simplicity in the title of this essay is that your financial contribution addresses a range of challenges for our society and our lives — and will ripple into the world like a stone dropped in a pool of water through the wide-spread sharing and distribution of existing films, and into the future with new films and presentations… often in unexpected ways.

Simply said, the films I make reach people. Please come along for the ride of the existing films and beyond, and wonder with me about what comes next.