![]() can expose themselves only to a limited amount of hate.” Applying such insight to the nuclear threat, one might fear that too much focus on the massive death toll of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will simply desensitize people while simultaneously generating a sense of helplessness about the nuclear age.įrom the perspective of Miyamoto, most of us are thinking about the nuclear problem all wrong. such an approach dulls its moral imagination we become so overwhelmed by instances of mass murder that we find ourselves reluctant to intervene in any of them for fear that we will have an obligation to engage in all of them.” Wolfe adds, “For better or worse, most human beings. Alan Wolfe, for instance, cautions against dramatizing genocide, explaining, “Far from arousing the world’s conscience. If there is a constructive way of doing so, it is easier said than done. The reality of few nation-states being actual nuclear players may make the mushroom cloud all the more abstract, despite the fact that everyone on the planet is at risk should there be a hostile (or accidental) nuclear launch.Īnother factor in this overall discussion is how people gaze at horror. Moreover, few countries are members of the so-called nuclear club-only eight nations possess nuclear weapons (United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea), possibly nine (adding Israel). In that same battle, kamikaze pilots sunk thirty-six US Navy ships.įor non-Americans, the mushroom cloud may seem afar because the United States is the only nation that ever resorted to using nuclear weapons against an adversary. Indeed, the death toll of Okinawa, an island considerably smaller than Japan itself, was quite high: lost were the lives of 130,000 Japanese troops, 70,000 to 160,000 Japanese civilians, and over 12,000 American military personnel. The Battle of Okinawa, which ended some two months prior to the atomic bombings, is often cited by those who argue against the revisionist history, noting that Japanese resistance was staunch up to the bitter end. One academic writes, “the number of American deaths prevented by the two bombs would almost certainly not have exceeded 20,000 and would probably have been much lower, perhaps even zero.” For the old GIs who recall being readied for a possible invasion of Japan proper, such thinking defies common sense. In addition, popular American imagination tends to reject the revisionist academic writings that argue that World War II could have just as well ended without the use of atomic bombs. into a deep depression” after visiting ground zero and the museum. In his journal, he wrote about touring the museum devoted to the atomic bombing, calling the experience “shattering.” The exhibits, he wrote, “left me with an appalled sense of the end of the world.” He was accompanied by his wife who was “plunged. experienced when visiting Hiroshima in November 1984. De Groot alludes to this possible reality, writing: “Americans like to believe that they were a force for good in the twentieth century, yet that conception is confused by the fact that they are the only ones ever to have used the Bomb.” Such introspection would invariably involve a certain unpleasantness, like what the late American historian Arthur M. Perhaps Americans tend to look at the mushroom cloud from afar because there is no real desire for a robust national introspection. The mushroom cloud becomes a symbol of our collective indifference, even though we are all under threat. We live under the mushroom cloud, Miyamoto observes, but we tend to look at it from a distance, from an abstract vantage point. At this writing, the international community is alarmed by Iran and North Korea, two countries that are pushing the envelope by either attempting to develop or further develop a nuclear weapons program. How to Start Remembering and Hate the BombĪs noted by Yuki Miyamoto in Beyond the Mushroom Cloud, since 1945 there have been two thousand atomic tests on land, sea, or air while currently in the world there are some twenty thousand nuclear weapons. Reviewed by Roger Chapman (Department of History, Palm Beach Atlantic University) New York: Fordham University Press, 2012. Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: Commemoration, Religion, and Responsibility after Hiroshima.īordering Religions: Concepts, Conflicts, and Conversations Series.
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