James Cameron Options The Last Train From Hiroshima

[Hunter Rider]

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=62177

Source:Variety
January 8, 2010

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 firsthand—the Japanese civilians on the ground and the American flyers in the air. Thirty people are known to have fled Hiroshima for Nagasaki—where 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 Nagasaki—and why.

This could be very special.

 

[Matt]

Hmm, something tells me Cameron will not make this into a fictional movie but will instead use it as the basis for one of his documentaries.

 

[Aesop Rocks]

This looks like it's going to be good.

 

[dark_b]

i agree matt. i have a feeling this is a documentary that he would do not a movie.

 

[:eek:]

Hiroshima Book Optioned by James Cameron Halted

Source:The Associated Press
March 1, 2010



The Associated Press reports that Charles Pellegrino's book "The Last Train from Hiroshima," which James Cameron had optioned for a possible film (see original story), has been pulled by publisher Henry Holt and Company.

The report says:

"It is with deep regret that Henry Holt and Company announces that we will not print, correct or ship copies of Charles Pellegrino's `The Last Train from Hiroshima,'" the publisher said in a statement issued to the AP.

Doubts were first raised about the book a week ago after Pellegrino acknowledged that one of his interview subjects had falsely claimed to be on one of the planes accompanying the Enola Gay, from which an atom bomb was dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945. Holt had initially promised to send a corrected edition.

But further doubts about the book emerged. The publisher was unable to determine the existence of a Father Mattias (the first name is not given) who supposedly lived in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, and John MacQuitty, identified as a Jesuit scholar presiding over Mattias' funeral.

You can read more on this here.