National, disciplinary, and linguistic boundaries all play a role in academic study and nowhere is this more apparent than in traditional humanities scholarship surrounding the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How would our understanding of this seminal event change if we read Japanese and Euro-American texts together and across disciplines? In Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Yuko Shibata juxtaposes literary and cinematic texts usually considered separately to highlight the “connected divides” in the production of knowledge on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, shedding new light on both texts and contexts in the process. Shibata takes up two canonical works—American journalist John Hersey’s account, Hiroshima, and French director Alain Resnais’ avant-garde film, Hiroshima Mon Amour—that are traditionally excluded from study in Japanese literature and cinema. By examining Hersey’s Hiroshima in conjunction with The Bells of Nagasaki (Nagai Takashi) and Children of the A-Bomb (Osada Arata), both Japanese bestsellers, Shibata demonstrates how influential Hersey’s Hiroshima has been in forging the normative narrative of the hibakusha experience in Japan. She also compares Hiroshima Mon Amour with Kamei Fumio’s documentary, Still It’s Good to Live, whose footage Resnais borrowed to depict atomic bomb victimhood. Resnais’ avant-garde masterpiece, she contends, is the palimpsest of Kamei’s surrealist documentary; both blur the binaries between realist and avant-garde representations. Reading Hiroshima Mon Amour in its historical context enables Shibata to offer an entirely new analysis of Renais’ work. She also delineates how Japanese films came to produce the martyrdom narrative of the hibakusha in the early postwar period. Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki allows us to trace the complex and entangled political threads that link representations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reminding us that narratives and images deploy different effects in different places and times. This highly original approach establishes a new kind of transnational and transpacific studies on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and raises the possibility of a comparative area studies to match the age of world literature.

Fify-three years ago the first nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They killed some 250,000 poeple. A distinguished group of contributors examine the background and effects of the bombing and look at the lessons for a world which harbours 45,000 nuclear warheads.

This looks at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the differing perspectives of those who were involved - Making the atom bomb - The decision to drop the bomb - Japanese surrender - Manhattan Project - Potsdam Declaration - Atomic testing since these times.

Presenting a monumental achievement: 50 years of data cataloging the immediate, long-term, and hereditary effects of atomic radiation on the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Authored by one of the key members of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission founded in 1947, this unique work documents the critical findings and conclusions of the longest ongoing medical study in history; it will surely become the foundation for all future investigations and standards regarding the bioeffects of ionizing radiation. "In my opinion, Dr. Schull has written a very interesting and accurate account of the atomic bomb follow-up program in Japan. He writes extremely well, with areas of his particular scientific interest described in great detail. He also describes events and the social implications in a manner that has broad, general appeal." —Stuart C. Finch, MD University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey "A history of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki study is badly needed. I was very happy to hear that Jack Schull was working on such a project, and it is an understatement to say that I am anxious to see it published." —Seymour Jablon, PhD Bethesda, Maryland "Rarely in the history of a program will one have a nearly 50-year account from an eyewitness and major participant, beginning with the program's onset to the present. Jack's book offers the reader this extraordinary insight into the birth and development of the study of the A-bomb survivors. Moreover, he has served on all major national and international commissions dealing with radiation protection and risk assessment and he interweaves the Japanese studies into the radiation risk issues in a way that few, if any, other contemporary scientists can." —Seymour Abrahamson, PhD Radiation Effects Research Foundation On August 6 and 9, 1945, the only atomic bombs ever used in warfare were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destruction and death caused by those bombings presented the world with a vivid portrait of the dangers of the atomic age. However, the thousands of bomb survivors have given scientists a massive, firsthand perspective on the bioeffects of radioactivity. It is the study of these survivors that forms the foundation of the modern understanding of the immediate, long-term, and hereditary consequences of exposure to ionizing radiation. Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Half-Century of Studies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the definitive account of the methods, findings, and conclusions of the 50-year study on the survivors of the atomic bomb blasts. It is a truly monumental work, surveying a colossal body of data to offer a comprehensive, unified, and authoritative summary of not only the scientific study itself, but the personal, social, and political factors that have shaped the investigation from its inception. The book goes beyond the simple compilation of facts, giving the reader unique insight into this unprecedented research project and exploring the complex web of subjective perceptions and fears that color popular, national, and even scientific views of radiation exposure in moderate and extreme cases. Authored by Dr. William J. Schull, perhaps the single most influential scientist involved in the studies, this book conveys both his authority and sensitivity. Dr. Schull arrived in Japan in 1949 and was instrumental in the development of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. Since then, he has been one of the driving forces behind the largest medical follow-up study ever undertaken. His years spent working directly with bomb survivors imbue his narrative with a compelling personal history, and his service on numerous national and international committees studying ionizing radiation give him a broad, authoritative perspective on the implications of the ABCC's work. Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Half-Century of Studies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is first and foremost a scientific work, summarizing the core findings of the definitive study on radiation exposure; while throughout the book, the author provides personal accounts that illustrate the human dimensions of the bombings. In a world where nuclear power is increasing and exposure to radiation is a daily occurrence, this book is essential reading for all scientists associated with public, private, or governmental institutions that set standards of acceptability for exposure.

Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed. Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.

**Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award** The definitive history of nuclear weapons—from the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project—this epic work details the science, the people, and the sociopolitical realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb. This sweeping account begins in the 19th century, with the discovery of nuclear fission, and continues to World War Two and the Americans’ race to beat Hitler’s Nazis. That competition launched the Manhattan Project and the nearly overnight construction of a vast military-industrial complex that culminated in the fateful dropping of the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reading like a character-driven suspense novel, the book introduces the players in this saga of physics, politics, and human psychology—from FDR and Einstein to the visionary scientists who pioneered quantum theory and the application of thermonuclear fission, including Planck, Szilard, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller, Meitner, von Neumann, and Lawrence. From nuclear power’s earliest foreshadowing in the work of H.G. Wells to the bright glare of Trinity at Alamogordo and the arms race of the Cold War, this dread invention forever changed the course of human history, and The Making of The Atomic Bomb provides a panoramic backdrop for that story. Richard Rhodes’s ability to craft compelling biographical portraits is matched only by his rigorous scholarship. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail that any reader can follow, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a thought-provoking and masterful work.

This dissertation explores how knowledge on the atomic bombings has been produced in relation to postwar reconstruction, the formation of national discourses, and memories of war and colonialism. By examining cinematic representations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese, European, and American films, such as the canonical Hiroshima, Mon Amour and the Japanese documentaries used within it, the dissertation argues that while engaging in an open dialogue with each other in the form of refutation, divergence, and affirmation, these films respond to historical changes in the idea of a human being and the postwar world order resulting from the collapse of Japanese and European colonialisms and the emergence of the US as an atomic superpower in the Cold War. It also contends that the ostensible disjunction between Japanese and Euroamerican discursive spheres precisely constitutes a structure of interdependence substantiated by the complicity of nationalisms. This is a process of an active creation rather than a direct suppression and preclusion of knowledge. Chapter One examines the discrepancies in knowledge about films on the atomic bombing by tracing a variety of ways in which they are consumed, questioned, neglected and censored, while participating in the on-going debates about the disciplinary limitations of Japanese film studies. Chapter Two discusses how the creation of the epic world and the narrative of martyrdom that appear in Japanese films on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have contributed to the isolation of atomic victimization as a "Japanese" tragedy by locating them within a genealogy of these films made in the 1950's and the prewar and postwar histories of these cities. Chapter Three analyzes cinematic strategies to approach the atomic bomb victims, especially the performative aspect of victimization, the automaton-like human beings found in the ruins, and post-bombing victimization, in conjunction with a discussion of the plausibility of film narratives. Chapter Four reconsiders Hiroshima, Mon Amour by redefining the signification of Hiroshima in this film. It posits that what this film has portrayed is not a Hiroshima haunted by the memory of the bombing, but rather a Hiroshima obsessed with the memory of occupation, the on-going reconstruction, and prewar colonial legacies.

In this harrowing history of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, Paul Ham argues against the use of nuclear weapons, drawing on extensive research and hundreds of interviews to prove that the bombings had little impact on the eventual outcome of the Pacific War. More than 100,000 people were killed instantly by the atomic bombs, mostly women, children, and the elderly. Many hundreds of thousands more succumbed to their horrific injuries later, or slowly perished of radiation-related sickness. Yet American leaders claimed the bombs were "our least abhorrent choice"—and still today most people believe they ended the Pacific War and saved millions of American and Japanese lives. In this gripping narrative, Ham demonstrates convincingly that misunderstandings and nationalist fury on both sides led to the use of the bombs. Ham also gives powerful witness to its destruction through the eyes of eighty survivors, from twelve-year-olds forced to work in war factories to wives and children who faced the holocaust alone. Hiroshima Nagasaki presents the grisly unadorned truth about the bombings, blurred for so long by postwar propaganda, and transforms our understanding of one of the defining events of the twentieth century.

Hoping to finally end World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Three days later, the U.S. dropped another massive bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. The result was total devastation. Within seconds of the blasts, more than 120,000 men, women and children died. Thousands more would die from radiation sickness in the months to come. The war was over but the ongoing fear of nuclear destruction had begun.

Contains more than 400 photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki before, during, and after those fateful days