Living with the bomb : American and Japanese cultural conflicts in the Nuclear Age / Laura Hein and Mark Selden, editors.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Hein, Laura Elizabeth.

Selden, Mark

George R. Fink Memorial Fund.

Series:

Japan in the modern world

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hiroshima-shi (Japan)--History--Bombardment, 1945.

Nagasaki-shi (Japan)--History--Bombardment, 1945.

World War, 1939-1945--Japan.

Japan--History--1945-.

Japan.

History.

United States--History--1945-.

United States.

Physical Description:

ix, 300 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, [1997]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

I Introduction

1 Commemoration and Silencing: Fifty Years of Remembering the Bomb in America and Japan / Laura Hein, 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.

Notes:

"An east gate book."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the George R. Fink Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

1563249669

1563249677

OCLC:

35637969