Stephanie Duncan

America’s Hiroshima

The show “This is your life” filmed on May 11, 1955 featured an episode about Hiroshima. The episode had a guest who ferried the wounded people of Hiroshima across the river to Asono Park to receive help, this guest was Reverend Kyoshi Tanimoto. On the episode Tanimoto was introduced to Captain Robert Lewis, United States Air Force, who piloted the plane from which the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The host introduced the two men and told Tanimoto that Lewis came to “clasp [his] hand in friendship,”(234). The episode also featured twenty-five of the Hiroshima Maidens who had been brought to America to receive state-of-the-art plastic surgery to rid their scares from the bombing of Hiroshima. The episode was all about America coming to terms with Hiroshima and that it was responsible for dropping the atomic bomb. At the end of the show Audience members were encouraged to send generous donations to the Hiroshima Maidens as “for this is the American way,” (235). The “American way” being re-paying Hiroshima for the damage they have caused and he deaths of approximately one hundred thousand people. The “American way” is also seen in the aid they gave Hiroshima to re-build their city. There was a book written by John Hersey called Hiroshima this book allows people “to see the Japanese as human,” (241), The book gave Americans a way to mourn and a sense of guilt in the damage they caused to Hiroshima. America lost a sense of innocence after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and tries to make up for all of the bad they have caused.

Hiroshima’s America

In Japanese atomic bomb literature there is an absence of information about America, because the Japanese writers and publishers were afraid to raise issues of American power and responsibility (239-240). The Japanese also used this absence because they feared that doing otherwise would suggest a “renewal of memory,”(237). In Japanese atomic bomb literature the representation of America differs from the representation of Hiroshima in American atomic bomb literature. “To represent America in Hiroshima literature was in fact, an act that during the Allied Occupation of Japan could not occur, since Hiroshima literature itself was not allowed under the regulations of the American-imposed Press Code,”(239). An example of this absence of America in Japanese atomic bomb literature is seen in the 1951 collection of A-Bomb Poems, where the words America or the United States do not occur at all (244). It is clear in Japanese atomic bomb literature puts the reader in an exitless maze because the familiar binaries and memories are not noted in the works (252).

In “America’s Hiroshima” it explains how America has come to terms with Hiroshima. Whereas “Hiroshima’s America” makes it clear that Hiroshima has not come to terms with America. By placing these to works together shows the contrasts of the two.

Question: At the end of both “America’s Hiroshima” and “Hiroshima’s America” it says there will be no time that Hiroshima is over, does this mean the history of what happened and the guilt of America will always live on?

Allan Unger

There are two authors contributing to the reading on Hiroshima: Peter Schwenger and John Whittier Treat. Both have articles that refer to the events that occurred on August 6, 1945, which was the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Schwenger’s article deals with the United States and the effect that Hiroshima had on them, and what followed after the events, and Treat’s article deals with the Japanese and how atomic bomb literature written and represented by them differs from that of the Americans. Schwenger’s article opens interestingly with the mention of a talk show host bringing a victim of Hiroshima on stage; a victim. Then shortly after, the host brings on one of the bombers, making an awkward uncomfortable scene. There is a recurring mention ofguilt and how the guilt of the Americans was shown time and time again at air shows and ceremonies, commemorating the events at Hiroshima by reenacting bomb scenarios upon American soil and holding memorials. The article sums up how America has lost its innocence and Hiroshima will never be over for anyone. It will always be there in history, never forgotten.

Treat’s article differs in the sense that it looks at the Japanese perspective, and how emotions were paralyzed in writings, preventing a full understanding as to the extremity of horror and death. American and Japanese writings on the topic differ due to opposite representations and clarity of the story. The point of the article is to explain how one story can have two sides and two explanations as well as results of emotion. I think that the topic of this reading is a very dark and serious one, and has been a cause for debate for many years. It really makes me wonder how the world would be different without the atomic bomb, or rather if that specific attack didn’t happen. As for the articles, I enjoyed the beginning of Schwenger’s but after the talk show segment it just turned into what Treat was basically saying. For that reason I enjoyed Treat’s better.

Mike Vogl

Hiroshima was bombed and it was horrible. Many Americans at first were very happy to see the bomb drop, because they only saw a mushroom cloud and none of the terror or people that were in it. Americans had been subject to much propaganda and thought of it as “bombing the enemy“. The truth of it is they massacred many innocent people. Eventually more Americans started realizing the impact of what had happened because of literature based on what happened, resulting in “trying to patch things up“. There was a reenactment of the bombing, but it hardly compares to the destruction of what really happened because they were not victims.

Various tactics such as getting a victim to shake hands with one of the men who dropped the bomb. There were also attempts to give the “Hiroshima Maidens” plastic surgery to fix the damage the atom bomb had done to their looks. The American government pretty much spin doctored its way out of the situation. Donations were given out for aids because it’s the “American way”. All of this to fix what they had broke, but nothing can make up for it. There is no rationalization that could give anyone the right to unleash such devastation anywhere.

The “Disneyfication” of the situation completely distorted the facts, and warped the way Americans look at Hiroshima. The Japanese view things very differently, Americans still think it can be rationalized, but some things cant be fixed.