Hiroshima in History and Memory

by Edited by Michael J. Hogan

• ISBN13: 9780521566827
• ISBN10: 0521566827
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-03-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In this collection of essays, prominent historians survey the Hiroshima story from the American decision to drop the first atomic bomb to the recent controversy over the Enola Gay exhibit in Washington, DC. The first essay surveys the literature on the atomic bombing of Japan, while the second and third essays evaluate the decisions that led to that event. The remaining essays discuss how the Japanese and American people have remembered Hiroshima in the years since the end of World War II. They emphasize the construction of an official memory of Hiroshima, the challenge posed by alternative or counter-memories, and the tension between history and memory in the Hiroshima story. The collection thus unites up-to-date scholarship by diplomatic historians with the recent interest in memory that has emerged as part of the new cultural history.

Table of Contents

Illustrations

Preface

The authors

1. Hiroshima in history and memory: an introduction Michael J. Hogan

2. The decision to use the bomb: a historiographical update J. Samuel Walker

3. Understanding the atomic bomb and the Japanese surrender: missed opportunities, little-known near disasters and modern memory Barton J. Bernstein

4. Japan's delayed surrender: a reinterpretation Herbert P. Bix

5. The bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese memory John W. Dower

6. Exotic resonances: Hiroshima in American memory Paul Boyer

7. The quest for a peace culture: the A-bomb survivors' long struggle and the new movement for redressing foreign victims of Japan's war Seiitsu Tachibana

8. History, collective memory and the decision to use the bomb J. Samuel Walker

8. The Enola Gay controversy: history, memory and the politics of presentation Michael J. Hogan.