the national world war ii museum. 6:00 p.m. eastern, 3:00 p.m. tour of an exhibit on the bombings. as was created in cooperation with the peace memorial museum, the nagasaki atomic bomb museum and the american university museum. ♪

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>> the cards have been winning a lot. >> oh yeah, you are right. >> see, they have been winning the last three games, this time they won 12-4. >> look, we are going to the ceremony today. you know? >> you mean people are already there and lining up?

>> no this is a picture of last , year's ceremony. it is amazing how even after the bomb was dropped, the hiroshima dome did not collapse. ♪ matsubara.is miaykyako i was a seventh grader in junior high school. i was [indiscernible]

a mile away from the center. walking with 450 classmates. i am -- i was walking on the morning of august 6, 1945. the skies are perfectly clear without a cloud. temperature [indiscernible] very, hot, you know very very hot.

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>> the night before august 6, the enemy planes were constantly flying over hiroshima. around 7:30 the next morning, there was a siren indicating the planes had retreated from hiroshima. all the students and teachers started to go to school. at 8:05 the teachers gathered all the students together on the playground so we could start the morning meeting. i rang the bell, and the students started to line up in

front of the podium. ♪ >> today, we have this modern steel podium. but then, we only had a wooden one. and i would stand on this and say good morning and say a little speech to everyone. ♪

>> in the shade of the willow tree, there were two or three sixth grade boys. one of the boys started to look at the bright blue sky, like this. and that image was burned into my mind. later on i realized that child must have seen or heard the plane that came from the island called tinian, the plane that

brought the atomic bomb to hiroshima. >> why do you think there is a ceremony? >> because of the war and the bomb. it was something like 8:00 in the morning? like that, right? tell me what happened. >> it is when the atomic bomb was dropped on hiroshima. do you understand? >> yes, i do. >> are you sure?

>> in that direction where the sun is coming through, there was a blinding light, like a magnesium flash. it looked like lightning. i was thrown about 15 from where i'm standing. there were a lot of broken wood., poles, pieces of all of this rubble thrown on top of me. it was very, very dark. i realized i was thrown somewhere by a bomb explosion.

and it just hit me, i was not dead. i was alive. it was during the summer, a very hot time. something lukewarm fell from my forehead down to my face. i realized that must have hurt my head. and if i stayed there, i would keep bleeding and lose consciousness and eventually die. i thought i had to get out of there while my mind was clear. so i pushed and crawled thinking if i could not get out, i would die. ♪ finally, i managed to pry myself out from under the rubble. ♪

>> luckily in our family we don't have anybody that suffered from the bomb. grandmother lived in takamachi, so she was from where the bomb was dropped. >> where is takamachi? >> a little further from matsuda . even there the windows broke. >> did she think it was a typhoon or something? >> she said it was much worse than a typhoon.

>> when i got out i told the children to stop crying that i , was there. so they can stop crying. i told the children to sit still while i ran out to look help. i ran about a quarter-mile to

the rescue squad station. everywhere i looked was strange and desolate. it was almost as dark as night, and i kept seeing all of these broken houses. i had thought that a bomb had dropped on my school. but as far as i could see, everything was destroyed. so i kept wondering, where did the bomb drop? when i finally reached the rescue station, there was nobody there, so i ran back to the school. there were many students buried under the collapsed school building, crying in pain. so we started to pull them out. besides myself, there were only two or three other women to help. all the other teachers were lying on the ground unconscious. we managed to get all of the students out, but when we

reached two young second-grade girls, they did not have a pulse anymore. i remember thinking children should not have to die. i felt so sad. ♪ there was one young girl who had a very serious head injury. it looked like a split pomegranate. i thought the poor girl, she will probably die here tonight without ever seeing her parents again. then that girl with a little

weak voice like a bug said teacher, i have to pee, i need to go to the bathroom. i said no, you are too hurt to move. that is ok if you just go lying down, don't worry, it is all right. the way i spoke to that child and cared for her before she died, i still remember it like yesterday.

>> the school children and i had been working in the building about 10 minutes when a sudden flash of light made me think there was a bomb in the building. the students all ran away and

were scattered. i went to the riverbank to see what was happening. after standing there for a while , four or five of the students who had run away saw me and yelled teacher, help me. the image of those students will never leave my mind. running over to me, with their hair all wild, hollow and dirty faces, helplessly waving their arms at me. that scene later led me to make a painting called scream.

>> these paintings are actually not based on what i have seen but images of what i imagined hiroshima harbor would be. filled with bodies that came from the reverse. how did the bones in the harbor feel? i painted while thinking of things like that. whether they would be sad or lonely. whether they would be angry at the people who dropped the atomic bomb. i would think of these things while imagining and painting the

bones on the bottom of the harbor. i don't know where most of my students disappeared to. but i could imagine their bodies floating down some river and ending up at the bottom of hiroshima harbor.

>> then i heard stories about another plane and another bomb. so i tried to run away. by chance, i found my wife as she was trying to escape with our 1.5-year-old child, which really was a coincidence. our child was very thirsty and was asking for water. i thought if i could get some water, my child will live. as i was leaving to get water, the child just died. for some reason i can't remember

my child's face when he died.

>> the left half of my face was all burnt and also my hand. my arm from here to halfway down my back and both knees. my mouth would not open and for a while they had to feed me liquid. many people who were burnt, like my wife, would get these red spots on their skin. their hair would fall out if you brushed it. their teeth would loosen and fall out, too.

the story got around. that when that started to happen, you would die soon after. my wife started to get the red spots, and her hair began to fall out. i began to worry that she would die soon, and i had this feeling of horror. this feeling of being so close to death yet having no medicine, no help. that is how we lived. ♪

>> i have received this afternoon a message from the

japanese government which testifies the unconditional surrender of japan. [applause and cheers] ♪ >> on august 15, hearing the emperor's announcement on the radio, my spirits felt a shock. my immediate reaction was that i had been deceived. so many things had been said that i believed. that this was a holy war, to hat it was to build a strong asian community. but it was actually a war of aggression.

>> i would think more about this later on. and i came to believe that this aggression, this invasion caused the atomic bomb to be dropped on hiroshima. all of those scenes, all of those desperate and sad scenes were the result of this war that we caused. ♪

>> i personally feel that i must become a person who will not be deceived. as an educator, i would constantly think how to teach students so they won't be deceived.

educate students so that they will want peace. >> when i was in school they had a lot of classes about peace, a lot more than they have now.

there was a movie we saw at school the other day. it was a movie about the war. in the beginning of the movie, a little pony was born. after the pony came, the bomb dropped in hiroshima and the pony told the people to run away. another bomb would drop. after a few minutes another bomb drops. >> in nagasaki? >> yeah. >> what happened to the pony? >> it was ok. >> and it was titled the pony of nokia sake? news -- of nagasaki? was it a cartoon? >> it had something like puppets. >> puppets? >> i think it had puppets, but it was more like a movie with regular people. it was something like puppets in a regular movie.

i think it was something like that. >> he doesn't remember anything.

>> these paintings are titled "reaching for peace." but the title is not that important. to search and find a brightness

likeness of peace, a from such a dark and gloomy background, that is the concept. i would like to continue painting such themes about peace. it is my conviction. being a survivor, i always have the hope in my heart of living in a world with no atomic bomb. ♪

>> the children nowadays, the younger generation all hope and pray for apeaceful world. a world without war. but hoping and praying alone will not bring peace. they must also work for it with their hands and feet. because just hoping for peace without taking action will do nothing. this is what i would like to tell the children. ♪

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♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you can watch archival films on public affairs in their entirety on our weekly series, "reel america," saturday at 10:00 p.m. and sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern here on "american history tv." chirping] this is "american history tv", featuring events, interviews,

archival films and visits to college classrooms, museums and historical places. exploring our nation's passed every weekend on c-span3. announcer 1: 75 years ago in the summer of 1945, the united bombs dropped two atomic on japan, one august 6 and the 9.er nagasaki on august in this recorded history by the national world war ii museum army veteran eugene disabatino , talks about his assignment to the manhattan project which included the assigned at los alamos and watching over the bomb being dropped on nagasaki. the national world war ii museum provided the video. eugene: well i was born in , wilmington, delaware. and basically, i grew up in wilmington, delaware. my family had a construction business