Tree In The Sky

As a pilot in the US air squadron which dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima, Claude Eatherly is consumed by guilt. Accomplished and decorated for bombing missions over Tokyo, he seeks to destroy any heroic perception of himself upon returning to America.

He begins to commit robberies on banks and shops, forges cheques and prosecutes other crimes in an act of atonement. He creates a fund for the surviving victims of Hiroshima, posting envelopes stuffed with dollars to Japan and donating his pension to Hiroshima war widows. Following discharge from the US Air Force, Eatherly is hospitalised, where he experiences breakdown and loss of identity caused by traumas in his immediate past.

The ‘Tree in the Sky’ of the mushroom cloud haunts Eatherly and, he feels, follows him everywhere. Shards of nightmarish recall breaking through into Eatherly’s consciousness are contradicted by alternative versions of events, playing endlessly through his mind in a constructed scenario, an Hiroshima of his mind...