#ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI AFTER EFFECTS SERIES#
These voices speak the unspeakable, yet 75 years after the United States government dropped the only atomic bomb on a civilian population-twice-how many Americans heed them? Young readers may know the anti-war manga series ‘Barefoot Gen,’ but have we seen the Maruki murals, savored Kenzaburō Ōe’s essays or watched the film version of Masuji Ibuse’s ‘Black Rain?’ Now is the time. Words bloomed from eyewitnesses like Tamiki Hara, Yōko Ōta, Sadako Kurihara, and Kyōko Hayashi. Is there hope? Weeds once returned in no time, barely covering the pain and peril of the city. Rimming Japan, reactors imperil the coasts for the short-term benefits that Haruki Murakami, the fabulist, excoriated in his Catalunya Speech as ‘efficiency.’ The mayor summoned ‘an anti-nuclear tsunami.’ Instead the 2011 tsunami exposed how the ‘Atoms for Peace’ myth had flourished. Once upon a time a mayor dared us to unmake the prophecy uttered about Hiroshima post-August 6, 1945: ‘Nothing will grow for 75 years.’ Mayor Akiba Tadatoshi predicted in a 2004 Peace Declaration we could ‘bring forth a beautiful “flower”’ for the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings, namely, the total elimination of all nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.’ Linda Chance, associate professor of Japanese language and literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Penn Today asked scholars and experts on Japan and nuclear weapons to share their thoughts on the anniversary. The two bombs took the lives of more than 200,000 people.
Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, leading to Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II. August 6 marks the 75th anniversary of America’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used.
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