Documentary: 'Voices of Hiroshima'

For many people, the word "Hiroshima" brings to mind a mushroom cloud. We probably don't think about an actual place — least of all, the modern city on Japan's Kyushu Island. Modern Hiroshima has a million people and houses and office buildings and a pro baseball team.

Even with President Obama's historic visit there, we may not hear much from Hiroshima itself — the place or its people. More than 70 years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, most of the people who lived through Aug. 6, 1945, in that city are gone. But two decades ago, many thousands of A-bomb survivors still lived in Hiroshima.

Reporter John Biewen went there in 1995 to interview some of those survivors. He made a documentary for Minnesota Public Radio to mark the 50th anniversary of the bombing. He has rebuilt that documentary to mark Obama's visit.

Former MPR News reporter John Biewen now directs the audio program at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He is also host and producer of the podcast, "Scene on Radio".