Hiroshima and Nagasaki

On August 6, 1945, the world changed when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb was dropped on another Japanese city, Nagasaki. The decision to drop the atomic bomb was left to one person, President Harry S. Truman. Since the decision to use the atomic bomb and following the unprecedented destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many questions regarding the decision have been asked, including if President Truman had made the correct decision by unleashing the bomb and what his actual motivations for doing so.

On August 15, 1945, President Harry S. Truman announced on television that Japan had surrendered. This decision was prompted by the catastrophic events of August 6 and 9, 1945, in which the United States of America dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing massive destruction of the infrastructure and loss of human life. 'What Light, Black Rain' provides us with a lens through which to view these events.

Debating the utility and ethicality of nuclear weapons has often centred on the “unspeakability” of nuclear war, often drawing this silence from the apocalyptic power of nuclear technology. This can manifest itself in greater secrecy in policy decisions concerning nuclear technology and the phenomenon of “nuclear reclusion” in the public realm. This article compares the memorialization of nuclear weapons in Japan and the US, and explores how remembering the attack on Hiroshima from multiple viewpoints could lead us towards different policies or support more open debate about nuclear weapons and power.

N. 29 dei Quaderni Satyagraha, rivista del Centro Gandhi di Pisa, interamente dedicata alle devastazioni atomiche di 71 anni fa.
A cura (redazione, traduzione, elaborazione grafica) di Yukari Saito, fondatrice del Centro di documentazione "Semi sotto la neve".

An unfinished essay written in the wake of my course entitled "Writing In The Wake of Disaster" (Autumn Semester 2009). This is a theorization of the content and theme of the course, which demonstrated that undergraduate non-majors can handle Blanchot's most challenging texts. My students deserve credit for valuable contributions to the ideas herein.

Il fenomeno della “New wave” dell’horror giapponese, che ha portato ad un rapido rinnovamento del genere sia in ambito nipponico che statunitense grazie a numerosi remake, è stato al centro di un vivo interesse critico soprattutto in relazione alla novità delle tematiche e delle scelte stilistiche perseguite. Sono passati quasi vent’anni dall’uscita di Ringu (Nakata Hideo) e Cure (Kurosawa Kiyoshi), che hanno fondato il filone e forse ancora troppo poco è stato detto sulle ragioni profonde che hanno portato a questo epocale cambiamento nelle strategie di figurazione dell’orrore. In particolare sembra che in questi lungometraggi (ed in altri coevi, come Kairo, Ju-On etc.) sia possibile ravvisare un peculiare interesse per le tematiche dell’impronta, cosa che permetterebbe di parlare di un’autentica estetica del fotografico. A partire da questo presupposto, il saggio si propone di ricollegare la rappresentazione del trapasso ad una delle grandi immagini rimosse dell’immaginario giapponese: le “ombre” rimaste sui muri e sulle strade di Hiroshima e Nagasaki all’indomani dell’attacco atomico nucleare del 1945. Assumendo queste fotografie come strumenti di indagine privilegiata, si mostrerà come questi film si presentino come un ripensamento di alcuni temi ed elementi iconografici che nella memoria nipponica sono indissolubilmente legati alla catastrofe nucleare (l’ansia escatologica, l’introiezione del senso di colpa, il tema del contagio pandemico etc.).

En agosto de 1963, Kenzaburo Oé, que entonces era un prometedor escritor de veintiocho años, se dirigió a Hiroshima para hacer un reportaje sobre la Novena Conferencia Mundial contra las Armas Nucleares. Oé, indiferente a las maniobras de poder de los políticos, se interesó de inmediato por los testimonios de los olvidados del 6 de agosto de 1945, divididos entre «el deber de recordar» y el «derecho a callarse»; ancianos condenados a la soledad, mujeres desfiguradas, responsables de la prensa local y, sobre todo, los médicos que luchaban contra el «síndrome de Hiroshima», los efectos tóxicos de la radiación. Y estos encuentros habrían de cambiar para siempre la vida y la obra del escritor. Oé vio en su heroísmo cotidiano, en su rechazo a sucumbir a la tentación del suicidio, la imagen misma de la dignidad. Página 2

Ishibumi - literally 'stone monument' or stele, is the documentary account of the deaths of 321 students and four teachers of the Hiroshima Middle School, who had assembled for demolition work near ground zero on August 6th, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima. Originally a television documentary, the book records the oral and written traces of the students final days as a memorial of their deaths and as a petition for the elimination of nuclear weapons of war. It is one of the canonical classics of memorial literature, well-known by  ever high school student in Japan. this is the first English translation that delves into the home front of Japanese nuclear history.

We live in remarkably perilous political and social times: images of war, violence and suffering bombard us. Ominously, a new East-West nuclear arms race (Cold War 2.0?) may now loom, exacerbated by rhetoric from London, Washington and the EU. 
This paper introduces a multimodal approach to 'poetry in motion' (Templer 2009): images, animation as an online frame. The paper's second half explores one famous short poem through this lens, about the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, an exemplary form of "Peace art: words and images interwoven" (Brzezinska 2017). The text by poet Nâzim Hikmet  is simple, haunting, a plea by a dead child aged 7 for an end to war and violence. The article stresses the value of poetry visualized as a prism for insight and empathy (Krznaric 2012; 2014), also in looking at social issues today (Maley & Peachey 2017; Xerri 2017). Such ‘kinetic art’ can open learners’ hearts and mindspace, fostering critical digital literacies (Albers 2018).

On 6 August 1945 the atomic bomb Little Boy was dropped over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On 9 August another one, Fat Man, targeted Nagasaki. The first bomb directly and indirectly killed about 237,000 people in Hiroshima. The Nagasaki death toll was about 80,000 people. These bombardments were undertaken by the US at the same time when they took part in the creation of the first International tribunal for crimes against humanity committed by German and Japanese war criminals. At the same time, it could be said that atomic bombardments of Japanese cities looked like a big war crime. Never before had so many people, overwhelmingly civilians, been killed simultaneously. These two massacres were planned and prepared in detail by the winners of the war at the end of the war. However, these bombardments were never officially recognized as a war crime. People who planned and carried out the bombing of Japanese cities never faced trials. They were proud of their actions. Debates over the atomic bombardment of Japan never stopped. In my essay I will try to find the answer, whether those bombardments were a war crime and, if so, why they were not investigated. I will explore legal and ethical aspects of those bombardments and their effect on world history.

This article explores the poetry written by survivors of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki to elucidate the history of atomic memory in the city. Looking closely at works by three poets, the article discusses how poetry served as a medium for the survivors to grapple with traumatic memory and convey the atomic experience in meaningful ways that both provided catharsis and challenged a landscape of memory that ignored their personal trauma and suffering. An analysis of their verse also informs our understanding of the historical nature of war trauma more generally.

This essay argues that from a Utilitarian standpoint, the United States was justified in detonating atomic weapons as a means to ending the war with Japan. A land invasion of Japan was the only other sensible option and this would have lead to increased American casualties, increased Japanese casualties of both civilians and soldiers due to Japanese cultural values advocating death over surrender and lastly, the complete annihilation of all American POW's housed in Japan. When these potential casualties are tallied, the result is far greater than the lives that were lost in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings making it an ethically necessary decision.

Anders was a preeminent critic of technology and critic of the atomic bomb as he saw this hermeneutico-phenomenologically in the visceral sense of being and time: the sheer that of its having been used (where the Nietzschean dialectic of the ‘having been’ reflects the essence of modern technology) as well as the bland politics of nuclear proliferation functions as programmatic aggression advanced in the name of defense and deterrence. The tactic of sheerly technological, automatic, mechanical, aggression is carried out in good conscience. The preemptive strike is, as Baudrillard observed, the opponent’s fault: such are the wages of evil. Violence in good conscience characterizes the postwar, cold war era and the present day with its mushrooming effects of neo-fascism under the titles of national security and anti-terrorism. Karl Krauss’ 1913 bon mot regarding psychoanalysis as the very insanity it claims to cure [Psychoanalyse ist jene Geisteskrankheit, für deren Therapie sie sich halt] has never been more apt for political translation — straight into the heart of what Lacan called the Real which has ‘always been’ the political register. Where Habermas and heirs have tended to disregard Anders (as they also sidestep Heidegger and Nietzsche), just as most philosophers of technology (and indeed philosophers of science) have ignored the political as well as the ethical in their eagerness to avoid suspicion of technophobia, we continue to require both critical theory and a critical philosophy of technology, a conjunction incorporating Ander’s complicated dialectic less of art in Benjamin’s prescient but still innocent age of technological reproduction but and much rather “on the devastation of life in the age of the third industrial revolution.” Thus rather than reading Anders’ critique of the bomb as limited to a time we call the Atomic Age — as Anders himself varied Samuel Beckett’s 1957 Endgame (Fin de partie) as Endzeit that is “Endtime,” here invoking the eschatological language of Jacob Taubes as Anders does — this essay connects his reflections on the bomb with his critique of technology and the obsolescence of humanity as of a piece with our dedication to hurling ourselves against our own mortality. This concern with the violence of technology, this hatred of the vulnerability of having been born and having been set on a path unto death (the mortal path that is the path of life) inspires Anders’ engagement with the sons of Eichmann — the heirs of those who designed and executed the Nazi death camps and extermination chambers of the Holocaust — and the sons of Claude Eatherly — the heirs of both those who designed and those who as pilots (banality of banality) deployed the bombings that exploded the supposed stuff of the sun itself contra the Empire of the Sun in the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Reginald Wilfred Whiting (Bill) Rowed (28 August 1916 - 10 June 1990) was an official Australian Second World War artist and printed textiles lecturer who taught at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) from 1948 to 1976. He was also a well-known painter of the Australian high country, especially as a watercolourist, an avid skier and raconteur.

On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Over the next five decades, Americans continued to evaluate and interpret the significance of this event, with various groups finding differing meanings of the incident. For veterans, the event meant the end of the war without a deadly invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. As the United States declassified documents, historians took a different approach; a consensus developed within the historian community that suggested President Truman did not have to use nuclear weapons on Japan to force surrender. Yet, the two sides of the issue remained isolated from each other, and no national debate ever attempted to determine whether Truman made the correct decision. In the early 1990s, the National Air and Space Museum attempted to provoke this discussion. The resulting Crossroads exhibit based most of its claims in the post-revisionist school of thought, while paying tribute to the veterans who had served in the war.

Yet, Smithsonian officials cancelled the exhibit after months of intense lobbying efforts on behalf of veterans‟ groups, who opposed Crossroads because of its perceived anti-military tone. At the same time, the conservative movement in the United States had just elected the first Republican Congress in nearly four decades; newly-empowered culture warriors saw this as an opportunity to root out “anti-American” leftists at government institutions. At the same time, the historian community failed to rally to the defense of the exhibit, and Air and Space found itself with few allies. The Crossroads debacle asks, at the most basic level, which version of history to believe, historians‟ analyses or participants‟ memories? As the cancellation shows, memory trumps interpretation.

The successive bans on Christianity in Early Modern Japan led to several persecution campaignsespecially during the early seventeenth centurywhich resulted in numerous deaths, among both the local converts and the missionaries. These events made a major impact on Europe, including the beatification of the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Nagasaki, who died in 1597 and were blessed 30 years later. Active missionary efforts ended by the late 1630s, but during the three centuries of the Edo era (mid-seventeenth-mid-nineteenth centuries), Christianity survived within hidden communities. Such communities kept legends of local martyrs, and they were sometimes the subjects of administrative control. A few incidents also saw people killed due to alleged links to Christianity. The martyrs of Japan came back to the forefront of Western discourse during the nineteenth century, with the rediscovery of “hidden Christians”
in 1865 and the persecutions that followed. This process culminated in the
beatifications of the martyrs in Japan and the official recognition of Christianity. In this context, the notions of Christian martyrs/martyrdom and persecution were accepted in Japan for the first time, and these terms became officially translated. After that, Japanese Christians started building a new identity through the construction of narratives on Christian martyrs. They especially tried to locate the alleged locations of the executions of martyrs in the early modern period. Such efforts resulted in the establishment of the Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum in Nagasaki and the beatification and canonizations of various groups of martyrs (in 1981, 1987, 2007, and 2016), as well as the recognition of relevant locations as World Heritage Sites. After the Second World War, the martyrs of Japan were also linked to the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, a fact which was stressed during the visit of Pope John Paul II to Japan, becoming an important part of the identity of the city.

IN: Anais de História de Além-Mar, XVIII (2016)

Inaugurated in 1962, the Museum of the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Nagasaki and its accompanying monument are dedicated to the memory of the first saints born from the mission in Japan: the Twenty-six martyrs of 1597 (beatified in 1627, canonized in 1862).
Analyzing both the architecture and the nature of the collections of the museum, this article demonstrates how the entire structure was created, in the context of post-War Nagasaki, as something between a museum and a place of worship, and also as a “lieu de mémoire,” following the models of Jesuit spirituality, such as Louis Richeome’s “La peinture spirituelle,” or the “Spiritual Exercises.”


Palavras-chave: Mártires, Museu, Relíquias, Japão, Jesuítas, Nagasaki

Inaugurado em 1962, o Museu e Monumento dos Vinte e Seis Mártires são dedicados à memória dos primeiros santos nascidos da missão no Japão: os vinte e seis mártires de 1597 (beatificado em 1627, canonizado em 1862) .
Analisando a arquitetura e a natureza das coleções do museu, este artigo demonstra como toda a estrutura foi criada, no contexto do pós-guerra Nagasaki, como algo entre um museu e um local de culto, e também como um “lieu de mémoire”, seguindo os modelos da espiritualidade jesuíta, como a “La peinture spirituelle” de Louis Richeome ou os “Exercícios Espirituais”.

Inspired by the “aesthetic turn” in International Relations (IR), the present dissertation focuses on atomic bomb literature, a genre in Japanese literature that portrays the nuclear attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the viewpoint of survivors, of hibakusha. The study contrasts stories and poetic depictions, conveyed by literature, with dominant narratives and representations of the events, championed by sovereign authorities. Its aim is to call attention to the fissures between literary accounts and hegemonic discourses, disrupting the latter. The dissertation argues that the contrast between narratives accentuates divergences, exposes inconsistencies, undermines self-evident concepts, and fragments taken- for-granted “truths.” By bringing out differences, this contrast creates a vivid, kaleidoscopic memory of the atomic bombings. Moreover, the study advances that literary texts enable us to grasp aesthetic, cultural, and emotional facets of nuclear weapons that have been often neglected in IR scholarship. The dissertation investigates how atomic bomb literature destabilizes the sovereign frontiers that limit our modern political imagination. By delineating alternative narratives of war and nuclear atrocities, literature challenges the “atomic silence”, the silence of death and destruction imposed by the bomb, and sparks critical thinking about world politics and security.

Wynalezienie bomby atomowej było przełomowym wydarzeniem nie tylko w dziejach II wojny światowej, ale historii świata w ogóle. Niektórzy uważają, że był to wstęp do współczesności. Dopiero od tego momentu ludzkość jest w stanie unicestwić się w całości, popełnić masowe samobójstwo. Tak potężna broń w rękach tak niewielu ludzi budzi uzasadniony lęk. Szczególnie, jeśli weźmiemy pod uwagę absurdalne (przy odpowiednim dystansie czasowym) powody, dla których Ziemia stawała na krawędzi wojny atomowej. Nie mogło obyć się bez filmowej debaty na ten temat. W końcu w grę wchodzi życie wszystkich mieszkańców naszej planety.

Celem pracy jest całościowe nakreślenie obrazowania bomby atomowej w filmach powstałych w latach 1945-2013. Opierając się na literaturze historycznej, socjologicznej, geopolitycznej, fizycznej i filmoznawczej a także źródłach internetowych, wyróżniam przedstawienia broni nuklearnej różniące się pod względem retorycznym i estetycznym. Dzięki temu możliwe jest zauważenie i zrozumienie zmiany stosunku społeczeństwa, polityków i filmowców do bomby jądrowej.

Praca składa się z dwóch rozdziałów. Pierwszy z nich to chronologiczny przekrój filmów fabularnych na tle zmian politycznych, gdzie dużą rolę poświęcam współczesnej historii Stanów Zjednoczonych. W tym rozdziale skupiam się na zabiegach formalnych a także nastrojach społecznych, które można odczytać z kontekstu filmów.

Drugi rozdział podzielony jest według stosunku powstałych filmów dokumentalnych i instruktażowych do broni nuklearnej. Zauważywszy strategie retoryczne poszczególnych filmów, rozróżniam je na obrońców i oskarżycieli atomu oraz nieliczne wyjątki wykraczające poza ten układ binarny.

A presente monografia visa desenvolver uma análise sobre as diferentes representações de contextos paisagísticos presentes no mangá autobiográfico Gen Pés Descalços. Com isso, investigamos como foram construídas e ressignificadas essas representações na obra de Keiji Nakazawa. Essas representações contidas na linguagem dos quadrinhos revelam fontes de informações interessantes, no qual podemos extrair uma gama de dados sob múltiplas perspectivas. Para a Arqueologia, estudar a materialidade imagética-textual das histórias em quadrinhos nos permite ter acesso aos processos socioculturais para a compreensão da dinâmica do passado das sociedades produtoras de quadrinhos. O propósito desta pesquisa é abordar um tema pouco explorado pelos estudos arqueológicos, problematizando os quadrinhos como cultura material e abrindo horizontes para a pesquisa de artefatos inseridos no bojo da indústria de massa não contemplado pela academia. Para este trabalho, a investigação consistiu abordar discussões teóricas da Nova História Cultural e Literatura, fincando esta monografia na interdisciplinaridade. Isso possibilitou trazer estudos sobre representações, memórias e paisagens. Essa interdisciplinaridade permitiu aplicar a metodologia da Hermenêutica de Profundidade de Thompson (2011), bem como do Levantamento Arqueológico de Paisagem de Carver (2009) para interpretar as representações de diferentes contextos paisagísticos que transitam em Hiroshima e que estão contidas em Gen Pés Descalços.

S u m m e r 2 0 1 1 This paper attempts an analysis of Japanese photographer Domon Ken's work in the immediate postwar years, in particular between 1950 and 1958. This period encompasses the rise of the so-named realism in Japanese photography, as it was advocated by Domon himself. Starting in 1950 as monthly contributor to the journal Camera he not only developed and publicized his ideas on the notions of photography, but at the same time intensively shaped a generation of younger amateur photographers, thereby leaving his personal imprint on the subsequent direction of Japanese photography. The paper focuses on a discussion of the medium of photography itself and its interpretation through Domon by means of a close reading of his work Hiroshima (1957). Here, in order to establish an essential theoretical background for Domon's understanding of realism, I draw from his own treatises on photography and the writings of philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō, by whom Domon was greatly influenced. I intend to illustrate that the immediate postwar years were a period of major changes in the use of photography, especially triggered through Domon's own approach to and understanding of this medium.

This essay examines how photography and news footage of the Hiroshima bomb have been used as a backdrop for the action genre in Japanese film and videogames. The case studies are Fukasaku Kinji’s film Battles without Honor or Humanity (1973), and Kojima Hideo’s videogame Metal Gear Solid (1998). Fukasaku’s opening sequence employs photographic stills of the mushroom cloud, burnt-out ruins, and the black market to set the violence of yakuza gangs against the political-military violence of the United States. A generation later, Kojima's game used photographic stills of the atomic bombing in a strikingly similar way, including footage of nuclear waste facilities and weapons manufacturing. Both texts position Japan as a victim, with Hiroshima symbolizing America’s abuse of technology and power. Although both texts belong to the action genre, there is a major difference in the subjectivity of the main characters, stemming from the different narrative trajectories of each text and the media specificity of cinema and games. Agency in Kojima's text allows the player to negotiate and reshape the historical memory of Hiroshima in their own experience, performing the anti-nuclear critique through in-game actions. Combining meaningful play with digital history, videogames are highly effective vehicles for political and social critique.

This article considers the place of the Hiroshima bombing and the September 11 attacks as singular acts of violence constituting major points of rupture in the historical consciousness and chronological narratives of the Western world: Ground Zero is Time Zero. Geographically and temporally delineated instances of intense death and destruction, both acts have been construed as moments when the world `changed for ever'. Our schemata of interpretation — the mental frameworks through which we impose meaning and continuity on the world around us and determine the range of our expectations — were violently overthrown by those events, shattered by images that exceed our minds' capabilities of re presentation and symbols that challenge our liberal metanarratives of ineluctable progress. By bringing to the fore their aesthetic dimension and reading them through the lens of the Kantian notion of the sublime, we can grasp those events in their original intensity as overwhelming revelatory experiences. Apocalyptic both in their imagery and the meaning attributed to them, those unprecedented acts of terror represent turning-points in our reconstituted historical narratives, marking a culmination of history leading to it as well as the start of a new era in which it is proclaimed that many previous assumptions no longer hold.

Abstract This essay re-evaluates the ethics of subject relations in documentary film in the context of films dealing with traumatic memory and disaster. Using a mix of personal insights developed in the context of making a film about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and an examination of notions of representation in the literature of documentary film studies, trauma studies and social science, the essay suggests that the case of disaster testimony and its witnesses, the keystone location of the witness to the disaster in the story arc is a position that needs to be reexamined. From a narrative angle, the disaster story is a representational limit situation, where meaning and language break down. From a social point of view the notion of the " use " of testimony as part of a narrative raises complex ethical questions as witnesses are deployed in film and literature. Looking at recent work in anthropology and trauma studies, I document how survivors of traumatic situations have tried to acquire agency in relation to their own stories and their use. The paper notes that such stories are now part of a growing set of discourses in juridical contexts (reparations) and political ones (truth and reconciliation commissions) and looks at how problems of social and personal trauma elide in the construction of larger narratives. It suggests that the urgencies of such contexts are themselves implicated in a traumatized