Avatar director James Cameron has optioned Charles Pellegrino’s upcoming nonfiction novel “The Last Train From Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back.”
On the promo tour in Japan for Avatar in December, Cameron visited Tsutomu Yamaguchi, one of the last survivors of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII. Yamaguchi died Monday at the age of 93.
The following is a description of the book:
Drawing on the voices of atomic-bomb survivors and the new science of forensic archaeology, Charles Pellegrino describes the events and aftermath of two days in August when nuclear devices detonated over Japan changed life on Earth forever
Last Train from Hiroshima offers readers a stunning “you are there” time capsule, gracefully wrapped in elegant prose. Charles Pellegrino’s scientific authority and close relationship with the A-bomb’s survivors make his account the most gripping and authoritative ever written.
At the narrative’s core are eyewitness accounts of those who experienced the atomic explosions firsthandthe Japanese civilians on the ground and the American flyers in the air. Thirty people are known to have fled Hiroshima for Nagasakiwhere they arrived just in time to survive the second bomb. One of them, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, is the only person who experienced the full effects of the cataclysm at ground zero both times. The second time, the blast effects were diverted around the stairwell in which Yamaguchi had been standing, placing him and a few others in a shock coccoon that offered protection, while the entire building disappeared around them.
Pellegrino weaves spellbinding stories together within an illustrated narrative that challenges the “official report,” showing exactly what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasakiand why.
