Heartland: Paper City

A documentary that looks at the activism of the now-elderly survivors of the March 10, 1945, firebombing on Tokyo.

For Heartland Film Festival showtimes and tickets, click here.

On March 10, 1945, United States planes dropped incendiary bombs on Tokyo — and later other cities — in an attempt to force Japan to surrender and end the war in the Pacific.

The fires created by the blasts spread quickly throughout Tokyo since most of the areas detonated housed civilians who lived in wooden and paper houses.

The death toll from the raid topped 100,000 — of which the vast majority were civilians.

Filmmaker Adrian Francis’ “Paper City” does not focus on the bombing as much as it does on the elderly Japanese survivors whose scars are internal as well as external.

Francis follows a group of senior citizen activists who are trying to get the government to acknowledge that the actions and polices of the wartime Imperial Japanese Government were just as much as fault — if not more so — than the U.S. government that ordered the bombing.

These activists are part of a multi-pronged campaign to keep the current Japanese government from expanding its military, forcing the government to acknowledge the mistakes of the wartime regime and demanding reparations because the civilian population were not allowed to flee and were forced to fight fires in the aftermath of bombing raids.

Their activism draws critics, who say they should be protesting at the U.S. Embassy, demanding restitution from our government.

But these aging people — the vast majority in their 80s and 90s — continue to demonstrate.

Their bigger aim is to educate Japan’s young people about what happened during the war and to convince them not to allow it to happen again.

“Paper City” uses a few still photos of the bombing’s aftermath to display burned and charred bodies; it is not done for shock, but to remind the world of the deadly collateral damage created by war.

The survivors tell stories of families and loved ones killed in the raid. Surprisingly, their bitterness is not so much aimed at the United States, but at the failures of their own government to protect them.

“Paper City” will be shown at 12:15 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 8, at the Living Room Theaters, Theater 2 and at 4:45 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 9, at the Glendale Landmark Theater, as part of the Heartland International Film Festival, which runs from Oct. 6 to 16.

I am a founding member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. I review movies, 4K UHD, Blu-rays and DVDs for ReelBob (ReelBob.com), The Film Yap and other print and online publications. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com. You also can follow me on Twitter @ReelBobBloom and on Facebook at ReelBob.com or the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My movie reviews also can be found at Rotten Tomatoes: www.rottentomatoes.com.