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Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age
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Comments/Reviews
Description: The development and use of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki number among the formative national experiences for both Japanese and Americans, as well as for U.S.-Japan relations throughout the last half of the twentieth century. It is now clear, however, that memories and lessons learned from the bombings are still being reworked and contested, perhaps even more heatedly than they were in 1945. Tracking the development of that fifty-year trajectory, this volume explores the ways in which the bomb has shaped the self-image of both peoples: for Americans, the dominant story is that the bombs provided an appropriate and necessary conclusion to a just war; for Japanese, it is a symbol of their victimization. The distinguished contributors analyze the ways in which memories of the bombs, constantly reworked in the media, in the arts, and in the political arena, continue to define important, albeit often unacknowledged, undercurrents in the U.S.-Japan relationship. The dialogue in this book is attentive to both Japanese and American voices and puts into historical, intellectual, cultural, and moral context the powerful legacy of an event whose different meanings remain alive, contentious, and in flux.
Selected Contents:
I. Introduction
1. Commemoration and Silencing: Fifty Years of Remembering the Bomb in America and Japan, Laura Hein and Mark Selden
II. Commemoration and Censorship 2. Triumphal and Tragic Narratives of the War in Asia, John Dower 3. Between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima/Nagasaki: Nationalism and Memory in Japan and the United States, Yui Daizaburo 4. Making Things Visible: Learning from the Censors, George Roeder, Jr. 5. Commemoration Controversies: The War, the Peace and Democracy in Japan, Ellen H. Hammond 6. Mass Death in Miniature: How Americans Became Victims of the Bomb, Lane Fenrich 7. Patriotic Orthodoxy and American Decline, Michael S. Sherry
III. Contending Constituencies 8. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Voluntary Silence, Monica Braw 9. The Mushroom Cloud and National Psyches: Japanese and American Perceptions of the A-Bomb Decision, 1945-1995, Asada Sadao 10. Memory Matters: Hiroshima's Korean Atom Bomb Memorial and the Politics of Ethnicity, Lisa Yoneyama 11. Were We the Enemy? Hiroshima Survivors in America, Sodei Rinjiro 12. Remembering Hiroshima at a Nuclear Weapons Laboratory, Hugh Gusterson
IV. Afterword 13. Learning About Patriotism, Decency and the Bomb, Laura Hein
Comment(s): "The editors' superb selection is such that throughout this journey of intense learning and reflection, we are compelled to look on both sides of the Pacific and, for that matter, the Sea of Japan." -- Norma Field, University of Chicago
"This is a book about how Japanese, Americans--not the least Korean-Japanese and Japanese-Americans directly affected by the bombings--and the rest of the world have lived with the history of atomic destruction, how we have remembered, forgotten, commemorated, and erased that history." -- Marilyn Young, New York University
"A powerful collection that confronts the consequences of the atomic bombing of Japan for that nation, for the United States, and for the world. Stripping away the veils of carefully manufactured illusions, it brings readers face-to-face with the realities of the nuclear era." -- Lawrence S. Wittner, SUNY Albany
Review(s): Rather than follow a well-trodden path and argue over which side deserves more blame and who should apologize for what, the writers of Living with the Bomb soundly criticize both the United States and Japan for their inability to stop looking at the war through nationalistic eyes and see it for what it really was: a tragedy of immense scale in which no one was innocent. Japan Times
[A] stimulating collection ... by ... American and Japanese scholars presents a critique of the dominant ways in which the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ... have been remembered since then in the United States and Japan. ... This book resonates with the contestedness of memory, even more so as it was conceived in response to the 1995 political conflict ... about the Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibit. ... The editors have successfully paired the historian's sensitivity to the processes of change over time and the social scientist's interest in comparing social patterns across space. ... Throughout ... stories by atomic bomb victims of various nationalities bring the history and legacy of the atomic bombs to life. But it is Laura Hein's afterword that, through the seeming lightness of family memories, exposes the graveness of ethical concerns and historical contingencies without waving a moralizing finger. Monumenta Nipponica
All of the essays are powerful and useful for both scholars and students. ... The pieces that reveal the Japanese context of the debate over the atomic bombings will be of particular interest to United States scholars, and the comparison of United States and Japanese attitudes toward the issue is illuminating. In revealing the faces (and voices) of the survivors, the articles remind us that the meaning of the bombings cannot be contained within debates centered entirely on technological, diplomatic, military, or political issues. The Journal of American History
Invaluable. ... This thoughtful volume raises vital questions about memory, history, commemoration, image, and avoidance. Fresh perceptions compel the reader to re-examine preconceived notions. History: Reviews of New Books
More than a study of commemorations, ... Living with the Bomb is a study of the role of national narrative. Its editors have skillfully used the anthology format to provide varied perspectives. Particularly in its inclusion of works written in both Japan and the United States by both Americanists and Japan scholars, it forces readers to grapple with the common themes in and linkages between two histories that are often presented as self-contained and separate. The Journal of Asian Studies
This timely book documents the falsehood of official mythologies still proclaimed in both the United States and Japan regarding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Pacific War. Pacific Affairs
Some would rather not think about the horrors done in August 1945. The danger to succeeding generations is that a sanitized story will yield no meaning except that victory may be won with weapons of mass destruction. We owe our posterity a clear, truthful record so they can draw their own moral conclusions and assess frankly the annihilatory dangers that confront them. This work will help them in that task. Science & Society
    
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