Search

This article shows that tourism development was a driving factor in the formation of Hiroshima memory culture from the start. By focusing on tourism, this article discusses a hitherto neglected aspect of public atomic bomb memory and raises criticism of area studies’ ongoing preoccupation with the nation which risks overlooking local as well as structural factors. Many aspects, such as postwar pacifism, can be explained from the perspective of tourism. Dean MacCannell’s concept of “staged authenticity” is used to explain how atomic bomb tourism ties into previous research on Hiroshima memory and how tourism discourse is structured. Furthermore, it offers an alternative approach to understanding sites of dark tourism defining them the particular way in which their “staged-ness” plays out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that historicising the iconic 1959 French film Hiroshima mon amour reveals a different set of meanings that most scholars have overlooked. As France found itself embroiled in the brutal and bloody Algerian War of Independence, many started reflecting on the meaning and aftereffects of the Second World War. Despite its anti-colonial universalist humanism, Hiroshima remains haunted by colonial ghosts and fantasies of post-war 'Asia' where Asian female bodies are passive and Asian male bodies only echo other European male bodies. Ultimately, sexual and racial differences organise the film's narrative of war and canonises a Eurocentric version of 'history'. The film's melodramatic love story renders invisible the ways gender and sexuality shape understandings of violence, wars, and violated bodies. Against Marguerite Duras's and Alain Resnais's intentions, the love story allows the remembering and forgetting of a (French) national history that only the female character embodies. Only the French woman stands in for subjectivity, memory and trauma, rendering everything else secondary. Once read as a historical text, the film illustrates the limits and ambivalences of post-war anti-colonial humanist political imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Resource Letter is a supplement to the earlier Resource Letters MP-1 and MP-2, and provides further sources on the Manhattan Project and related research. Books, review papers, journal articles, videos, and websites are cited for the following topics: general works, technical works, biographical and autobiographical works, foreign wartime nuclear programs and related allied intelligence, the use of the bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, technical papers of historical interest, postwar policy and technical developments, and educational materials. Together, these three Resource Letters describe nearly 400 sources of information on the Manhattan Project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes an activity program for elementary education which teaches the concepts about Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing.

The article focuses on the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima-shi, Japan and Nagasaki-shi, Japan in August 1945. The Little Boy atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima-shi on August 6, 1945. The uranium-235 projectile for the bomb was delivered on July 26, 1945. The bomb was loaded on its transporting trailer on August 5, 1945. A B-29 bomber was used to drop it. The Fat Man bomb was dropped in Nagasaki-shi on August 9, 1945. It destroyed many factories and buildings. According to official records, almost 44 percent of the city was destroyed by it.

The presents the report of the Natural Science Group on the after-effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945. 78,000 persons are reported to have been killed by the bombings in Hiroshima, according to the United Nations report. Japanese sources, however, have always claimed that there were more claiming there were 260,000 casualties. Total casualties in Nagasaki is reported by the U.N. report to be 27,000. Japanese sources claims that there were about 74,000 being killed. Diseases that proliferated after the bombings are discussed.

The article highlights the annual ceremony celebrated in the Peace Park in Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1970. A record of 48,000 people gathered in the Peace Park, which included different peace movements as well as students. The most memorable time in the ceremony is 8:15 a.m., the time when the bomb exploded over the city. People bow their heads for 60 seconds of silence, and the silence is broken by the tolling of the Peace Bell. The Hiroshima's annual ceremony suggests to the people to continue their lives, despite the dreadful memory.

Sayoko's ability to "hear" Seiji may even point to non-linguistic modes of speaking and listening, since we have no guarantee that what Sayoko hears is Seiji's garbled words and not simply the sound - the affective quality - of his voice. Keywords: Asia Pacific Journal; Japan; Asia Pacific; Pacific Rim; Asia; East Asia; Northeast Asia; Southeast Asia; Southwest Asia; South Asia; Contemporary Japan; Contemporary Asia Pacific; Contemporary East Asia; US-Japan relations; US-China-Japan-Korea relations; Japan-East Asian Relations; Japan-Northeast Asian Relations; Japan-Pacific Relations; Japan-Southeast Asian Relations; Japan-Middle East Relations; Japan-Central Asia Relations; Japan-South Asia Relations; Japan-European Relations; Okinawa EN Asia Pacific Journal Japan Asia Pacific Pacific Rim Asia East Asia Northeast Asia Southeast Asia Southwest Asia South Asia Contemporary Japan Contemporary Asia Pacific Contemporary East Asia US-Japan relations US-China-Japan-Korea relations Japan-East Asian Relations Japan-Northeast Asian Relations Japan-Pacific Relations Japan-Southeast Asian Relations Japan-Middle East Relations Japan-Central Asia Relations Japan-South Asia Relations Japan-European Relations Okinawa N.PAG N.PAG 1 12/14/22 20221030 NES 221030 What role does fiction play in the narration of history? Moreover, Medoruma's own I Okinawa "sengo" zero nen i ( I "Postwar" Okinawa, Year Zero i , 2005) points out that with ongoing American occupation of Okinawa via military bases, the Battle of Okinawa itself may be over, but Okinawa can hardly be described as "postwar" (Medoruma 2005, 16). [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on Japanese pacifism. Topics discussed include Japanese nationalism, postwar constitution in the country and settling of international disputes. Other topics which includes international peace, use of nuclear weapon by United States on Japan during World War II and U.S. military protection to Japan are also discussed.

This essay discusses military tourism in Hiroshima, Japan and the important role it played in a joint U.S.-Japanese campaign to reinterpret Hiroshima's tragedy along lines acceptable to the emerging American Cold War agenda. Topics covered include the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by the U.S. in World War II, the entry of the first American troops in Hiroshima in 1945 and the transformation of Hiroshima into a tourist site in the months after the first encounters between Americans and Japanese.

An excerpt from the "Comparative Connections: A Triannual E-Journal on East Asian Bilateral Relations" in the September 2016 issue is presented which focuses on the relationship between the U.S. and Japan and the commemoration of the dropping of the atomic bombs in August 1945.

The article discusses the visit of the U.S. President Barack Obama in Hiroshima, Japan, focusing on the myths surrounding the decision to use the atomic bomb and how to avoid the future use of nuclear weapons that brings large destruction. It highlights other issues involved in the resolution of the war such as the diplomatic reasons involving the Soviet Union, the assurances given to Japanese emperor, and the effort to abolish nuclear weapons from arsenals worldwide.

The article focuses on the Korean War with the ideological indoctrination of prisoners of war (POW) within the harsh POW camps played a central role in the war. It mentions that the interim would be placed under the joint trusteeship of the U.S. and the USSR, the U.S. had dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki of Japan. It mentions that the fear of communism led to the suppression of political protest and security forces with miniature civil war.

In this article, I reflect on the Radiation Effects Research Foundation and its ongoing studies of long-term radiation risk. Originally called the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (1947–1975), the Radiation Effects Research Foundation has carried out epidemiological research tracking the biomedical effects of radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki for almost 70 years. Radiation Effects Research Foundation scientists also played a key role in the assessment of populations exposed at Chernobyl and are now embarking on studies of workers at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. I examine the role of estimating dosimetry in post-disaster epidemiology, highlight how national identity and citizenship have mattered in radiation risk networks, and track how participants interpreted the relationships between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. Industrial interests in Japan and the United States sought to draw a sharp line between the risks of nuclear war and the risks of nuclear power, but the work of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (which became the basis of worker protection standards for the industry) and the activism of atomic bomb survivors have drawn these two nuclear domains together. This is so particularly in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Japan’s ‘third atomic bombing’. The Radiation Effects Research Foundation is therefore a critical node in a complex global network of scientific institutions that adjudicate radiation risk and proclaim when it is present and when absent. Its history, I suggest, can illuminate some properties of modern disasters and the many sciences that engage with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Richard Overy is Professor of History at the University of Exeter and the author of more than twenty-five books on the age of the World Wars and European dictatorship, including The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.Airpower has been used in armed conflicts since World War I. Aircraft have been deployed in support of the army on the ground and the navy on the surface. However, the twentieth century, with two World Wars, has also seen aerial bombardment of cities that fell outside the traditional use of airpower. During World War II, as part of the ideology of “total war”, cities were deliberately selected as targets of such attacks with the purpose of undermining the morale of the enemy's population and “winning the war”. Nowadays, although the deliberate bombing of entire cities is prohibited, it is still believed that aerial bombardment can produce certain political dividends for belligerents. In this interview, Richard Overy provides a historical perspective on the evolution of aerial bombardment since the World Wars, and puts in context the use of airpower in contemporary armed conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As is clear from the historiography of the US decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the judgments of historians are relative to the time, place, and perspective from which they are writing. There are four major schools of historical interpretation of the decision. First is the orthodox view that was offered by the participants in the decision. Second is the revisionist view of historians writing during the era of the Vietnam war who adopted a much more critical interpretation. Third is an interpretive school that gives weight to the Japanese role and responsibility. Finally, the author's view is found in a more long-range perspective that finds the momentum created by President Roosevelt's unconditional surrender policy as the decisive factor. This policy provoked unconditional resistance in the Japanese military. By 1945 the legacy of Roosevelt's policy was firmly embedded in American public opinion. Historians have reached no consensus among these different interpretive schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photo by the author. b I i The controversy over the Gunma monument reflects the growing influence of historical revisionism in Japan - a political movement seeking to whitewash Japan's wartime record and discredit voices that contain any hint of criticism of Japan's wartime conduct. The Korean Supreme Court's 2018 judgment was based on the assumption that Japan's "colonial rule of the Korean peninsula was illegal,"[46] an interpretation that Japan's political establishment has strongly rejected since the start of bilateral negotiations in the early 1950s.[47] Although some Japanese lawyers, such as Totsuka Etsuro, argue that the legal status of the 1905 and 1910 treaties, through which Japan turned Korea into a part of its Empire, was highly doubtful,[48] the debate continues to dog the bilateral relationship. [Extracted from the article]

The latest A-bomb survivor data for cardiovascular diseases are analysed to investigate whether in the first years after the bombings the baseline rates of proximal survivors were markedly different compared with those of the distal survivors. This phenomenon relates to a healthy survivor selection effect. This question is important for the decision whether to include or exclude the early years of follow-up when analysing the biological effects from acute low and high dose exposures following the nuclear weapons explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The present study shows that for cerebrovascular diseases and heart diseases the baseline rates are not significantly different in the first two decades of follow-up. Thus, for these two detrimental health outcomes, there is no need to exclude distal survivors and the first decades of follow-up time when investigating the shapes of the related dose-responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the opposition of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement to the use of nuclear weapons. Topics discussed include Fritz Bilfinger from the International Committee of the Red Cross as the first foreign Red Cross worker on the ground in Hiroshima in 1945, the Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opionion issued by the International Court of Justice in 1996, and the lack of capacity at the national and international levels to assist the victims of a nuclear detonation.

This year is the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – events that have left an indelible mark on humanity's conscience and consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Chugoku Shimbun is a daily newspaper based in Hiroshima, the city that experienced the first nuclear attack in human history. Founded in 1892, with a circulation of 620,000, the Chugoku Shimbun is one of Japan's leading regional newspapers. On 6 August 1945, an atomic bomb exploded above the city and citizens of Hiroshima. The bomb's powerful blast, heat rays and radiation annihilated the city, killing more than 100,000 people, including those who had succumbed to injuries and illness by the end of 1945. Those who managed to survive lost not only loved ones but also their homes, schools and workplaces. They endured the chaos of the postwar period and rebuilt the city. The Chugoku Shimbun has always stood beside the people of Hiroshima as a newspaper company that also endured the tragedy, and it worked hard to support the city's reconstruction in the aftermath of the atomic bombing. Furthermore, it has long pursued a variety of distinctive efforts to help realize a world without war and nuclear weapons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents photographs of documents by International Committee of the Red Cross delegate Fritz Bilfinger, dated October 24, 1945, detailing the effects of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan.

This article addresses the relative silence of American intellectuals in the face of what can be termed the greatest act of terrorism ever committed by a nation-state, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I analyze this indifference by American intellectuals as partly due to their taming by a cultural apparatus that functions largely as a disimagination machine in conjunction with the neoliberal forces of commodification, privatization, and militarism. I argue that terror and violence are now addressed within a public pedagogy driven by a spectacle of violence that defines itself as entertainment but is actually a form of public pedagogy that thrives on an excess of representation and an attempt to produce a collective surrender to political cynicism and apocalyptic despair. In this instance, despair and cynicism, if not a retreat from any sense of moral responsibility, are deeply embedded in a mode of politics in which education is central to a flight from social responsibility and an embrace of modes of depoliticization. The article concludes by calling upon educators, intellectuals, artists and others to create the institutions, public spheres, and other sites necessary to develop a critical formative culture capable of reclaiming public memory while simultaneously producing critically engaged intellectuals and a vibrant democratic polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically revisits the A-bomb victims’ plea for cosmopolitan commemoration that takes humanity, rather than nationality, as a primary frame of reference. To this end, I first elaborate the nature of cosmopolitan commemoration espoused by A-bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in comparison with another form of cosmopolitan commemoration pertaining to the Holocaust victims. I then analyze limitations in these cosmopolitan commemorations and explore how they can be transcended. In light of my critical analysis, I argue that genuinely cosmopolitan commemoration, a prerequisite for reconciliation and world peace, will appear on the horizon if the commemorations of the two events are synthesized with the help of ‘historians’ debate’ that continuously subjects the logic of nationalism to critical reflections. This synthesis has the potential to help people envision cosmopolitan politics – cosmopolitics – where they can engage in peaceful but agonistic struggles, not as enemies but as fellow humans, in collectively governing their lives in today’s war-torn world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]