Leslie Sussan’s father documented the tragic aftermath of the bombings at Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II. She hopes by sharing his story in her memoir that she will help bring healing to the world, writes Jon Kalish for Forward.

The late Herbert Sussan was in charge of a military film crew who documented the aftermath of the atomic bombings in Japan. Later, he would become a successful television producer. He died of lymphoma in 1985.

Before his death, he said the cancer was caused by radiation exposure in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Leslie, a retired U.S. Justice Department lawyer and administrative judge, grew up in Manhattan and then graduated from Bryn Mawr College.

In her memoir, Choosing Life: My Father’s Journey in Film from Hollywood to Hiroshima, Leslie recounts how her father’s experiences in Japan impacted his life as well as hers.

In a 1983 interview included in the Oral History Archives at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, her father described what it was like arriving in Nagasaki after the bombing.

He said it was “the most astounding and horrifying sight” he’d ever seen.

“All of us were absolutely stunned and nobody could believe it was one bomb,” he said.

He became haunted by the human tragedy there. He described the condition of survivors at one Nagasaki hospital as “such sights were never before seen by men. I knew at once that I would never be able to forget them.”

Read more of Herbert Sussan’s life at Forward.

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Interview with Leslie Sussan.