Remembering nukes: collective memories and countering state history

Abstract

Debating the utility and ethicality of nuclear weapons has often centred on the “unspeakability” of nuclear war, often drawing this silence from the apocalyptic power of nuclear technology. This can manifest itself in greater secrecy in policy decisions concerning nuclear technology and the phenomenon of “nuclear reclusion” in the public realm. This article compares the memorialization of nuclear weapons in Japan and the US, and explores how remembering the attack on Hiroshima from multiple viewpoints could lead us towards different policies or support more open debate about nuclear weapons and power.

Keywords:

• memory
• memorialization
• nuclear
• Hiroshima
• Enola Gay
• World War II

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Anthony Burke and Ben Meiches for comments on early drafts of this article.

Notes

1 This way of framing the potential in absurdity, and of the space gained in stretching out time, can be used to productively speak of another crisis folding out on a geologic time scale: the Anthropocene and the coming changes in Earth’s environment due to fossil fuel use.

2. Additionally, the United States’s use of the atomic bomb on civilians should be remembered as part of a larger trend that has seen an increase in civilian casualties during conflict. War has largely lost its legal meaning (war has not been declared in the US since the end of WWII, but the US has been involved in violent conflict since the Korean “police action” began in 1950) and, during this time, in all of the cold and hot wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, civilian casualties and increased “collateral damage” have become the norm in modern conflicts.

3. Of course, it is important to remember that the hibakusha are not a homogeneous group. Some declare the criminality of the use of the bomb, others call for remilitarization of Japan and the creation of a nuclear arsenal, and still others press for an ethical remembrance of Hiroshima and give testimony of the experiences – the kataribe (Miyamoto 2012, 179).