Lost Hiroshima Survivor Memoir: Set For Film Adaptation

A long-lost memoir written by Hiroshima survivor and Methodist priest Kiyoshi Tanimoto has been discovered in a US archive and will be published nearly 80 years after it was first written, alongside a major film adaptation already in development.

The 230-page manuscript, penned in 1947, was found in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University among the papers of American journalist John Hersey. It details Tanimoto’s firsthand experience of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, one of the most devastating events of the Second World War.

Tanimoto, who survived because he was away from the city at the time, returned to find a landscape reduced to ash and destruction. His account, written just two years after the attack, was originally intended to ensure the world never forgets the scale of the devastation.

The memoir will now be published globally on August 6, Hiroshima’s anniversary, by major publishers including Random House and Penguin. It will also be accompanied by a feature film titled Hiroshima, 8:15, with pre-production set to begin later this year.

The film will portray Tanimoto, with Japanese actor Takehiro Hira cast in the role, and is being produced by Donald Rosenfeld, former president of Merchant Ivory Productions. Rosenfeld described the work as especially urgent given rising global nuclear tensions, calling it a stark reminder of the consequences of atomic warfare.

The project revisits the horrors of the 1945 bombing, which killed an estimated 120,000 people within days, followed by the Nagasaki attack three days later. The memoir includes vivid recollections of survivors navigating a city engulfed in fire, radiation, and total collapse.

Adapted by filmmaker Phil Joanou, the screenplay draws heavily from Tanimoto’s writings and historical accounts, blending personal memory with one of history’s most defining tragedies.

The rediscovered manuscript is now being positioned not only as a historical archive but as a major cinematic and literary event, nearly eight decades after it was first written.