Oscar-Winning Filmmaker James Cameron Joins NTI Event to Discuss 80 Years Since the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

On Sunday, August 3, NTI hosted an hour-long conversation with NTI Co-Chair and CEO Ernest J. Moniz and Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Cameron, moderated by CNN Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour. The trio discussed nuclear threats 80 years since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, a new book called Ghosts of Hiroshima featuring double survivors who lived through both blasts, and Cameron’s plans to adapt the book into a film.

Cameron spoke about a death-bed promise he made to Tsostomu Yamaguchi to tell his story and his deep concern that people have forgotten about the unparalleled destructive power of nuclear weapons.

He noted that many of today’s nuclear weapons are “hundreds of times more powerful than what happened than the weapons that were released in Hiroshima. It’s almost unfathomable. And yet we turn our backs on it. You know it’s the very, very large elephant in the room of our entire civilization right now.”

The conversation comes as NTI prepares to mark 80 years since the bombings through its Critical Mass project, a new initiative focused on the power of storytelling to reframe the debate around nuclear weapons and mobilize public demand for policies that pull the world back from the brink.

“We are very much focused right now on the idea that culture has been and will be again, we hope, a way towards changing the narrative—having the public insist that policymakers drive us to a world without without nuclear weapons,” said Moniz.

Watch the full hour-long conversation.