Gutairist Moss Hills and his wife Tracy (last photo) were members of the ship's band. That night they set sail the weather was rough and at approximately 9:30 the ships power went out. None of the ships officers were giving the passengers instructions and after a while Moss decided to find out what was going on. He went down to the lower decks and saw the crew running around panicked and could see signs that the ship was sinking. The evacuation was a trainwreck as senior officers were getting into lifeboats without issuing a general alarm to the passengers and the captain was insisting the ship wasn't sinking (apparently he was also caught trying to board a lifeboat). Eventually they couldn't launch any more lifeboats (either because of the ship's tilt or because several of the lifeboats had left only partially full) and there were still 220 people left on board. Hills went up to the bridge which he found was completely abandoned and made a distress call. He got in touch with the captain of a nearby container ship who helped coordinate the rescue. 13 helicopters from the South African Defense Force arrived to airlift the remaining passengers and crew off the sinking ship According to the Hills and several other witnesses the captain was one of the first to be airlifted out by the helicopters when there were still passengers on board, The Hills would be among the last to be rescued before the Oceanos sunk beneath the waves at 3:30 pm on August 4. All passengers and crew were rescued (sources conflicted about the exact number being either 571 or 581).
Moss Hills would be praised as a hero in the aftermath of the sinking and would later change careers becoming a cruise director. The captain and some of the crew would later be convicted of negligence for their actions during the sinking.
This is sort of like the anti-Oppenheimer.
Barefoot Gen is a 1983 anime film based on the manga of the same name by Keiji Nakazawa (1939-2013). Both the film and the manga are loosely based on Nakazawa's experiences surviving the Hiroshima bombing when he was six years old (a lot of the basic facts like the main character's age and the fate of his family members seem to be directly taken from Nakazawa's own life). Nakazawa apparently didn't write about his experiences being a Hiroshima survivor for many years because atomic bombing survivors at one point faced discrimination in Japan (it was wrongly believed by some that radiation sickness was hereditary or even contagious). But in 1966 when his mother passed away he found out after her cremation that the bones that would normally remain behind had completely turned to ash due to the radioactive cesium weakening them. This inspired him to begin writing about his experiences finally publishing Barefoot Gen in 1973.
At the beginning of the movie six year old Gen Nakaoda is living with his family in Hiroshima in the final days of World War 2. The family consists of Gen's father (who's called "unpatriotic" by his neighbors due to his opposition to the war), his heavily pregnant mother, his older sister Eiko and his younger brother Shinji who Gen is close too. The family is struggling with poverty and rationing and Gen's mother is suffering from the effects of malnutrition. The family's doctor says the only cure is nutritious food but in the current circumstances there isn't any. Gen and Shinji are worried their mother might die but their neighbor tells them any ailment can be cured with fresh koi (the subtitles say "carp" but I clearly head them say "koi" and I wonder if they needed to translate that word as I'm sure most English speakers know what "koi" is) so Gen and Shinji hop the fence of an elderly neighbor who has a koi pond to catch some koi for their mother. Unfortunately the neighbor catches them and straight up hits Gen. But Gen tells the neighbor he can hit him as many times as he wants as long as he lets them take the koi and Shinji offers to be hit too explaining they need the koi for their sick mother. The neighbor allows them to take the koi home and Gen and Shinji serve it for their mother who starts to recover. Later the elderly neighbor stops by their house and Gen and Shinji both run away afraid that when their father finds out what they did he's going to give them some corporal punishment. Although the neighbor tells their father about Gen and Shinji hopping his fence to steal his koi when their father promises he'll punish them, the neighbor tells him not too saying he and his wife have good sons. When Gen and Shinji finally work up the courage to come home instead of being punished they are hugged by their parents.
This is only like the first 30 minutes of the movie and if you turned it off here you'd think it was a cute story about a family trying to make it through the last days of World War II. Although things are rough for the Nakaoda family they have it a lot easier than many other Japanese as at this point Hiroshima has been spared the destruction that has befallen most other major Japanese cities. The tone almost reminds me of something from Studio Ghibli (not Grave of the Fireflies but something lighter). If you knew nothing about history what happens at about 32 minutes into the movie would come as a complete shock to you.
When the bombing of Hiroshima happens they don't sugarcoat it at all. Some really stunning anime animation shows you the brutal result of the detonation of the atomic bomb. It's quite effective.
There's like 50 minutes left in the movie but I don't want to spoil it because I think you should check it out for yourself. I will say that although a lot of tragic stuff happens in this movie it does ultimately end on a hopeful note.
I think this movie is really important because until I saw it, it never really occurred to me that the atomic bombing happened to real people. I think without trying sometimes you can reduce the human cost to a number or a statistic in your head. Even after seeing Oppenheimer in theaters in 2023. Although I thought Oppenheimer was a great movie when I saw it looking back I realized it created more sympathy for Oppenheimer than for any of the atomic bombing victims. Barefoot Gen shows you the atomic bombing from the perspective of the victims. If I was a history teacher I'd show this movie in class when teaching about World War II and the atomic bombing because I'd like my students to realize that the victims were real people.