Atomic Bombs as History, Experience, and Culture

Catalog description

In January 2018, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set the hands of the Doomsday Clock (yes, it’s a thing) at two minutes to midnight, the nearest it has been to catastrophe since 1953. In late 2019, Putin announced that Russia had developed “invincible” hypersonic nuclear missiles capable of hitting virtually anywhere on the globe. The conflict in Ukraine harbors nuclear nightmares that haunt our world again. With world leaders flirting with the prospect of nuclear holocaust, an understanding of the only instance of nuclear warfare is again relevant, even 29 Asian Studies crucial. Through a rich variety of sources (textual, visual, and cinematic), this lecture-seminar hybrid will examine, from three major perspectives, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. First, reading scholarship and primary documents, we will look at the decision to drop the bombs, as well as the postwar claims justifying them. We will interrogate the American narrative that the bombings were militarily necessary and the assumption that they ended the war while also putting them into the historical context of World War II—specifically, strategic bombing of non-military targets, prospects of Japanese surrender in the final months of the conflict, and the looming Cold War with Russia. Second, we will confront the effects of the bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and their populations. Technical descriptions and firsthand accounts will help us grasp the unique destructiveness of the atomic bombs on both bodies and buildings, as well as how people coped with that destructiveness. The diary of Michihiko Hachiya, for example, will reveal a medical doctor’s observations on the breakdown of society and how ordinary Japanese dealt with the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. Finally, the course will examine the impact of the bombs on Japan’s postwar culture, including the profound…