Rylance: My revulsion at Hiroshima
SIR MARK Rylance believes the atomic bombings of Japan to end the Second World War were unnecessary “brutal experiments in warfare”.
Talking in a new Channel 4 documentary series, My Grandparents’ War, the star of Wolf Hall agrees with a Japanese academic who says the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came as Japan was negotiating a surrender.
Tomoyo Nakao tells the actor: “It was not necessary [the bombing].
They were
Japanese.”
“Yeah, yeah,” agreed Sir Mark, 59. “I’m afraid it looks like they [the Americans] were experimenting.
“These were brutal experiments in warfare… no doubt about it.”
Sir Mark, a Stop The War Coalition supporter, said he felt that both the Japanese and British soldiers in the Second World War were “fooled by ideas of empire”.
The actor’s grandfather, Osmond Skinner, was a prisoner of war in Hong Kong for four years and freed after the bombings. He was eventually reunited with his wife Hazel and returned to England, settling in Kent.
Osmond was an “important male role model” for Sir Mark. He worked at a bank in Hong Kong and was a gunner in the Volunteer Defence Corps when the Japanese invaded in 1941. As a POW he witnessed many atrocities.
“I knew him as a just man,” said Sir Mark. “He was a Christian who believed in forgiveness but he couldn’t forgive the Japanese.”
● Sir Mark’s episode can be seen on December 4 at 9pm. surrendering, the