Two years ago, Michel Pomarede, a French journalist working for France Culture, a French national radio station, visited Japan for the first time. He came with the aim of making a mammoth, 17-hour program about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, to accompany the 60th-anniversary commem- orations scheduled to be broadcast during the first week of August 2005.

Never before had such a lengthy radio program been aired on the subject.

This radio program is currently being made available online at franceculture.com and coincides with "Hiroshima, le souffle de l'explosion," a series of events taking place at l'Institut Francais in Tokyo's Iidabashi district.