The Devil's Century

This thesis, “We Are Become Death: Cultural Shockwaves of Hiroshima,” aims to achieve a greater understanding of what the atomic bomb means and what it can teach contemporary society, rather than to investigate the debates of policy and morality which tend to surround it. Towards this end, I briefly examine contemporary reactions to the bomb and “classically post-apocalyptic” works, revealing that of chief issue behind the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a restrictive and arbitrary idea of what “life” was that did not properly include the Japanese people. Further, the disturbing and nostalgic means through which the bomb is understood, the death view, is explicated and rejected. In search of a superior means of understanding the post-nuclear world, I turn to William S. Burroughs and his word virus theory, which I demonstrate to be explicitly linked to nuclear weaponry and discourse in The Ticket That Exploded, which brands the bomb as a symptom of the word virus, resulting in the provocative idea that the post-nuclear world existed before the bomb and created it, rather than the opposite. Burroughs depicts this world as a reality studio in which the films, representing prior thought formations, must be destroyed. Chief among these prior thought formations is the idea of one god essentialism. Burroughs’s culminating work The Western Lands is then investigated, in which the philosophy of silence is carried out in the form of a pilgrimage to the Ancient Egyptians’ place of immortality. Burroughs means to move us beyond the death view so that we might recognize the arbitrary nature of our languages, our innate ideas, and our fear of death. In doing so, an empowering and positive reading of the nuclear bomb is proposed, albeit one which makes the event itself all the more horrifying: the nuclear bomb serves as an event so immense and undeniable it might wake us up from our slumber, force us to recognize the issues of the word virus and lead us towards the Western Lands.

2020

August of this year is the 75th Anniversary of the first and only use of atomic weapons in war, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The essay recounts the changes in the historical account of the bombings since then, and the evidence suggesting that the bombings were unnecessary to end the war. Using the revised history, there is a moral assessment of the decision to drop the bombs. Employing norms that are common to the just war tradition, the author argues that the decision to attack the Japanese cities was morally flawed. Based on the standards of innocents being immune from direct attack, the inappropriateness of a demand for unconditional surrender according to right intention, and the idea of proportionality in causing harm, there is a serious case against the justice of the atomic bombings. The essay concludes by noting evidence that many Americans continue to uphold military practices that violate basic ethical norms.

2009

The following is an exploration of the representation of nuclear weapons in Japanese anime and US live action cinema of the 1980's. To investigate this topic, methods from Cultural Studies have been employed. Specifically, the silences and contradictions of the films are examined to reveal the cultural ideologies of Japan and the US in the era in which the films were produced. Following brief descriptions of the historical events of both Japan and the US in the 1980s, as well as the history of atomic cinema, key films from both nations are examined in depth. Critical analyses are contained for the Japanese animated films Barefoot Gen, Barefoot Gen 2, and Grave of the Fireflies, while the US live action films, The Day After, Testament, and Miracle Mile are investigated. The examination of these films reveals the repression of questions concerning guilt and responsibility pertaining to the Japanese involvement in World War II, and the US' creation and use of the first nuclear weapon. Additionally, a brief examination of Japanese and US films using displaced representations of nuclear weapons is included as further evidence of this repression.

… scientiarum. Second series: international journal of the …, 2009

This paper discusses the possibilities of representing the history of the atomic bomb through a historiographical narrative, the implications of such acts and ethical issues involved in the process and policies. Focusing mainly on the traumatic prospect analysis of the event, it should be noted that after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 historiography, as a whole, been affected by the magnitude of such an event created in terms of military strategy, configuration war and its destructive capacity. Talk about a traumatic event is a complex and difficult task that according LaCapra (2001) becomes essential to understand the possibilities that history has to represent and speak on this theme. Whereas only takes a traumatic event such a feature from its destructiveness and to shock people involved and / or who witnessed the middle way (through the media, for example) such an event. Hayden White (1999) presents the idea of modernist events. These events have the following main characteristics the fact of being more traumatic to be forgotten and hard enough that your recollection is something natural and not painful. The atomic bomb is certainly a clear example of a modernist event and it brings ethical and clear narrative to speak of such an event. Western historiography on the atomic bomb, in general, was restricted to treat it as a military artifact and fruit of diplomatic relations. Authors as Gar Alperovitz (1965), Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (2006) and Samuel J. Walker (1997) are a clear example of historiography It is dedicated to study the atomic bomb from a diplomatic perspective. Now, we intend to discuss the possibilities and ethical and political implications of historiographically we represent the atomic bomb in the West. Understand the role played by nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a weapon of war and a fierce diplomatic instrument implies in itself, in considering whether or not the traumatic bias that this event brought. Proof of traumatization that this event has is evident to see that throughout the twentieth century one give greater latencies (GUMBRECHT, 2013) existing was the fear of nuclear weapons, but the same was not released once against humans in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thus, we propose a theoretical analysis of the production of western historiography of the atomic bomb and the possibilities and ethical implications that we must face the historiographically we represent as controversial event and so important to the twentieth century and the present day.

Omer Ertur, 2025

A Personal Essay on Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki, Japan

For the Japanese people, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 are singular moments of holocaust which have produced collective memories so powerful that repeated attempts by Japanese policymakers to introduce or even discuss a nuclear deterrent have been severely contested and sanctioned. Even so, Japan’s enduring rivalries with nuclear-armed China and North Korea have produced a powerful conviction among Japanese policymakers that US extended nuclear deterrence cannot be given up. Thus, two of the most pronounced paradoxes of the nuclear age are (1) the social construction of Japan whose people are simultaneously “allergic” to nuclear weapons but who do not wish to have it “treated”, and (2) successive Japanese governments which are forced to endure the “nuclear allergy” but which also will not be rid of the “allergens”. This paper develops a theoretical account of the discourse of “nuclear allergy” and thereafter explores more fully the paradoxes of nuclear allergies which must never be treated and allergens which must never be expelled.

This essay explores the connections between and among personal narratives and cultural narratives, in this case the impact of a father's guilt over participation in the creation of nuclear weaponry and his violation of his daughter's trust, adoration and love of her father in her early years as a child. It is in the process of being developed into a longer essay, likely to be part of the author's memoir, "Going to Venezuela," in process.

PUC-Rio, 2016

Inspired by the “aesthetic turn” in International Relations (IR), the present dissertation focuses on atomic bomb literature, a genre in Japanese literature that portrays the nuclear attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the viewpoint of survivors, of hibakusha. The study contrasts stories and poetic depictions, conveyed by literature, with dominant narratives and representations of the events, championed by sovereign authorities. Its aim is to call attention to the fissures between literary accounts and hegemonic discourses, disrupting the latter. The dissertation argues that the contrast between narratives accentuates divergences, exposes inconsistencies, undermines self-evident concepts, and fragments taken- for-granted “truths.” By bringing out differences, this contrast creates a vivid, kaleidoscopic memory of the atomic bombings. Moreover, the study advances that literary texts enable us to grasp aesthetic, cultural, and emotional facets of nuclear weapons that have been often neglected in IR scholarship. The dissertation investigates how atomic bomb literature destabilizes the sovereign frontiers that limit our modern political imagination. By delineating alternative narratives of war and nuclear atrocities, literature challenges the “atomic silence”, the silence of death and destruction imposed by the bomb, and sparks critical thinking about world politics and security.

2000

This course explores the meaning of the nuclear age and the atomic bomb from multiple perspectives with particular reference to the United States and Japan, the United States and the Soviet Union, and the global context and implications of war, peace, security, and human survival. It considers the impact of the making and using of the atomic bomb on American and Japanese societies, including political, social, historical, technological, literary and artistic resonances, and historical memory. We range from the master narratives of nuclear technology, power politics and arms control to the personal narratives and responses of victims and citizens in the United States, Japan and globally. We consider the relationship