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The bombing of Hiroshima was perhaps the single most violent, and most traumatic, willful act committed in the history of humankind.
 When Paul Wilmshurst, BBC producer, writer and editor, embarked upon "Hiroshima"—a docu-drama re-construction of the bombing of Hiroshima, he found that, 60 years on, the story of Hiroshima is "a trauma that is still festering and will take generations to disappear, and maybe will never disappear".
Following a Sept. 2, 2005, screening of "Hiroshima" at the Frontline Club in London, the production team—including Wilmshurst, Gavin Rees (assistant producer and Japanese speaker who conducted the interviews with Hiroshima survivors) and actors Naoko Mori and Kenji Watanabe—discussed their experiences and responded to questions from the audience.
 Unlike a number of previous docu-mentaries about Hiroshima, Wilmshurst's approach focuses on perhaps the most disturbing part of the story—trying to show what actually happened on the day of the bomb.
Due to lack of film footage and archive material, this period of time remained an empty space in the story of Hiroshima until Wilmshurst and his team decided to face it head-on.
Working with horrific and painful survivor accounts, Rees and Wilmshurst inevitably became drawn into the trauma—which, even six decades on was still alive and as such was conveyed to anyone who was dealing with the material.
 The challenge, however, was not to contain or dissipate the trauma, but to keep it alive—as an essential part of the survivors' story and experience.
It became clear to Wilmshurst that some kind of support was needed, both for the production/ research team who were going to relive the trauma through its reconstruction, and the actors who were immersing themselves in extremely traumatic roles, especially since many of them came from a Japanese background.
That was when Wilmshurst and his team sought out the tools, expertise and support that the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma has developed over the years.
 The team knew that they would be challenged as they sought to live through the experience of re-enacting Hiroshima without damaging themselves, and at the same time making this experience accessible to others without gratuitously upsetting them.
Very much drawn into and immersed in the story of Hiroshima, the editing process was not easy, especially when different versions of the film were subjected to criticism from those less familiar with the story.
 Mark Brayne, Director of the Dart Centre Europe, talked at the meeting about the ability to hold a "dual awareness"—acknowledging that, when dealing with trauma, we deal with the intensity of human experience and we become drawn in.
"You should be drawn in," he said, "in order to tell the story well. But if you lose yourself, you know that you lose the ability to hold that 'dual awareness'—both being in and out."
 After completing the film, Wilmshurst went through a tricky and painful period where, as he put it, "suddenly you realise how hard it is to remove yourself from what you've been going through and get back into your life." "It just took a while."
Looking back at the Hiroshima story, and at his own and his team's experience, Wilmshurst said: "The thing that sums it all up is that people are vulnerable; people are resilient."
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