HIROSHIMA

An allied correspondent stands in a sea of rubble before the shell of a building that once was a movie theater in Hiroshima, Japan Sept. 8, 1945. (AP Photo/Stanley Troutman)

(STANLEY TROUTMAN)

When the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, approximately 130,000 people were killed either instantly or in the coming days from radiation sickness. One of them was Airman 3rd Class Navy Combat Gunner Normand Brissette.

Normand Brissette

The Lowell native was among a dozen or more U.S. servicemen killed by the nuclear explosion, although the U.S. government would not acknowledge this until the 1970s.

Brissette's story is getting renewed attention, however, in the form of a documentary being produced by Billerica resident Barry Frechette, The Sun of Lowell reports.

"Just the idea of some 19-year-old kid from three blocks over from where I grew up being on the ground in Hiroshima and actually surviving that day," Frechette told The Sun. There was something really powerful about it and I don't think people really knew about it. So from that point I figured I just had to tell the story somehow."

Brissette died several days after the detonation.

But Frechette's film looks to go beyond just the story of the 19-year-old serviceman. Shigeaki Mori was a young Japanese boy who survived Hiroshima and spent 35 years tracking down the stories of the U.S. servicemen killed there.

"To honor them, like all the others who suffered as victims that day, he worked tirelessly to track down each family and try to give some closure and even solace by letting them know what happened. And to have each airman recognized at the Hiroshima Peace Museum, named as victims of the atomic blast," Frechette writes on the Kickstarter campaign for the film project.

The working title of the film is Paper Lantern.

"This story is about them (Brissette and Mori)," Frechette writes. "The horrors they witnessed. The families that struggled to find the truth, and one man's effort to give them the gift of closure. It's about the humanity and compassion shown by those who were in the heart of the destruction."

Donations for the project are being accepted on Kickstarter.