Lost Memoir of Hiroshima Survivor Kiyoshi Tanimoto to Be Published and Adapted into Film

A lost memoir by Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a Methodist minister who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, has been rediscovered at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The 230-page manuscript, written in English in 1947, was found among papers belonging to journalist John Hersey by his grandson, Cannon Hersey. Hersey's 1946 New Yorker article "Hiroshima" had already made Tanimoto famous. The memoir, titled "Hiroshima, 8:15: The Lost Memoir," will be published in August by Random House in the U.S. and Penguin worldwide, following a competitive three-way auction. It includes a 9,000-word foreword by Tanimoto's daughter, Koko Tanimoto Kondo, now 81. A feature-length film adaptation is set to begin production in November, produced by Donald Rosenfeld, with Kondo as a producer. The memoir details post-bomb suffering with brutal precision, describing victims as "a procession of ghosts." Rosenfeld noted the story's topicality given current nuclear tensions with Iran and North Korea. Kondo, who has spent her life advocating for peace, wrote that for decades survivors remained silent about their experiences.