Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering (44 page)

4
. On American POWs in Hiroshima, see “Nij
Å«
sannin no Beihei Horyo mo Bakushi Shite Ita” (Twenty-three American POWs also killed by bombing),
Sh
Å«
kan Yomiuri
, August 13, 1978, 28–31; Barton J. Bernstein, “Unraveling a Mystery: American POWs Killed at Hiroshima,”
Foreign Service Journal
56 (October 1979): 17ff; and Robert Karl Manoff, “American Victims of Hiroshima,”
New York Times Magazine
, December 2, 1984, 67ff. This became the theme of a 1971 mural by the painters Iri and Toshi Maruki, who are discussed below. See John W. Dower and John Junkerman, eds.,
The Hiroshima Murals: The Art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki
(Tokyo, 1985), 21, 78–81.

5
.
Asahi Shimbun
, September 7, 1945; Grant Goodman,
Amerika no Nihon—Gannen, 1945–1946
(America's Japan—the first year, 1945–1946) (Tokyo, 1986), 120–23.

6
. Japan's research on the possibility of making a nuclear weapon is described in “‘NI' and ‘F': Japan's Wartime Atomic Bomb Research,” in John W. Dower,
Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays
(The New Press, 1993), 55–100.

7
.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
, 496.

8
. Kat
ō
Etsur
ō
,
Okurareta Kakumei
(The revolution that was given to us) (Tokyo, 1946). A copy of this fascinating booklet, which is now almost impossible to find in Japan, is in the Gordon Prange Collection of McKeldin Library, University of Maryland, College Park.

9
. The great majority of Japanese at the time exonerated the emperor from such criticism. Postsurrender propaganda by the Japanese elites, parroted by U.S. occupation authorities, strongly emphasized that the emperor too had been misled by the military.

10
. From the historian's perspective, we now can identify many ways in which Japan's fifteen-year mobilization for war created positive technological, technocratic, and institutional legacies for the postwar state, but these certainly were not apparent in the immediate postsurrender years. See “The Useful War” in Dower,
Japan in War and Peace
, 9–32.

11
. The quotations come from the
Asahi Shimbun
in the period immediately following capitulation, but such sentiments were ubiquitous.

12
. The social stigma attached to weapons-related research was reinforced by institutional constraints. In the early reformist phase of the occupation, the imperial military establishment was eliminated. Although constitutional prohibition of the maintenance of military forces under the new “no war” charter was violated after the Korean War broke out and Japan began to rearm (beginning in July 1950), the constitutional restraint did remain strong enough to prevent the creation of an institutionalized militarism comparable to the Pentagon and military-academic-industrial complex in the United States. Preservation of bureaucratic turf helped to perpetuate this situation over the decades, for primary responsibility for budgetary allotments resided in the hands of the Ministry of Finance, which remained largely committed to civilian-oriented policies. There was no defense ministry per se in Japan until 2007. At the same time, public opinion, while tolerating incremental remilitarization, remained opposed to constitutional revision and the more blatant sort of all-out militarization this might permit. There is no question that the “no war” constitution is an anomaly in the 1990s, when Japan does in fact have a large military budget, has become a major producer of “dual use” technologies, and has sent “peace keeping forces” abroad under UN auspices in response to immense U.S. pressure. Nonetheless, the persistence of popular opposition to constitutional revision for almost half a century to date has conspicuously influenced the nature and balance of Japan's economic and political policies in non-military
directions; and the most effective arguments against such revision consistently have played upon memories of Japan's “victimization” in World War II, of which Hiroshima always will remain the prime symbol. Contemporary political struggles over who will control the memory of the war (as seen in the Ministry of Education's notorious efforts to produce sanitized textbook coverage of this topic) are intimately tied to these issues of constitutional revision and whether or not Japan should become a more “normal” state with a bona-fide military. In this context, Japanese liberals and leftists commonly are able to make more effective neo-nationalistic use of the bombs than their conservative and right-wing opponents. To encourage popular support for constitutional revision and more “normal” militarization, the latter must perforce downplay the horrors of the old war—not only the suffering the imperial forces caused to others but also the horror brought home.

13
. For good early examples of this political logic equating “science” with a more “rational” democratic society generally, see
Asahi Shimbun
, August 22, 1945; and Toyoshima Yoshio's comments in the September–October 1945 issue of
Bungei
, quoted in Honda Sh
Å«
go,
Monogatari: Sengo Bungaku Shi
(The story of postwar literary history) (1966; reprint, Tokyo, 1992), 1:13.

14
. See Wilfred Burchett,
Shadows of Hiroshima
(Verso, 1981), esp. chaps. 1–3. Burchett's story, essentially as published in the
Daily Express
, is reproduced on 34–37. The counterpart scoop from Nagasaki, squelched by occupation headquarters, was by George Weller of the
Chicago Daily News
and totaled some 25,000 words. Ibid., 44–45. Laurence's special relationship with the Department of War, kept secret at the time, is discussed in my 2010 book
Cultures of War
.

15
. Iwasaki Akira,
Nihon Gendai Taikei: Eiga Shi
(Outline of contemporary Japan: Film history) (Tokyo, 1961), 226–27; Matsuura,
Senry
ō
ka no Genron Danatsu
, 192–95. Iwasaki was part of the project filming the aftermath of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was conducted by the Nichiei studio.

16
. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey,
The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
(GPO, 1946), 3–5. Accurate estimates of atomic bomb–related deaths are made problematic by many factors: the demographic turmoil that prevailed in Japan at war's end, especially in urban areas; the extraordinary destructiveness of the bomb, which obliterated whole neighborhoods, along with the records pertaining to their residents; the chaos prevailing after the bombs were
dropped, including hasty mass cremations of victims to prevent disease; and the absence of clear, coordinated, publicly accessible records of subsequent
hibakusha
illnesses and deaths. Useful data on fatalities, and the difficulty of calculating them, appears in the voluminous 1970 Japanese report translated into English as
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
(note 2 above); see 113–15, 367, 369, 406. Although conflicting figures are given here, the general conclusion is that total long-term
hibakusha
deaths were approximately double the 1946 figures for each city. In 1994, when the Japanese parliament belatedly debated legislation concerning death-benefits compensation to
hibakusha
families (see note 18 below), Ministry of Health and Welfare statistics that seem implausibly high commonly were cited indicating that between 300,000 and 350,000
hibakusha
had died prior to 1969, with all but 50 to 70,000 of these deaths occurring prior to 1958; see
Asahi Shimbun
, October 27 and November 3, 1994. Persistent replication of the outdated initial low estimates of fatalities has contributed to perpetuation of one of the enduring misleading statements in standard accounts of the war—namely, that many more people were killed in the Tokyo air raid of March 9 and 10, 1945, than by the atomic bombs in each city. Official Japanese estimates for fatalities in the first Tokyo raid are slightly less than one hundred thousand. Indeed, the Ministry of Health and Welfare estimates that
total
Japanese deaths from the conventional U.S. bombing of some sixty-four Japanese cities apart from the two nuclear targets was in the neighborhood of three hundred thousand persons—that is, equal to or less than its own (high) estimate of the fatalities associated with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

17
. On the ABCC, see John Beatty, “Genetics in the Atomic Age: The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, 1947–1956” in
The Expansion of American Biology
, ed. Keith R. Benson, Jane Maienschein, and Ronald Rainger (Rutgers University Press, 1991), 284–324; and M. Susan Lindee,
Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima
(University of Chicago Press, 1995).

18
. Passage of a comprehensive “
hibakusha
relief law” remained a subject of parliamentary debate in the final months of 1994 and was widely covered in the Japanese press. For a concise critical commentary on the national government's relative neglect of the
hibakusha
, see Shiina Masae,
Hibakusha Engoh
ō
(Hibakusha relief law) (Tokyo, 1992).

19
. The general U.S. policy of media censorship in occupied Japan began to be eased in late 1948 and was formally terminated in mid-1949. It was not until the February 1952 meeting of the Hiroshima Association
of Medical Sciences, however, that academic societies were allowed to engage freely in investigation and discussion of the medical effects of the bombs. See
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
, 513. In 1994, some Americans, including several Nisei who had been involved in censorship at the local level, argued that they were sensitive to these matters and would have been lenient if the Japanese had submitted noninflammatory writings on their bomb experiences. Such writings, the ex-censors said, simply were not submitted; see
Asahi Shimbun
, May 16, 1994. Such claims are unpersuasive, however, given the clear top-level opposition to such writings, plus concrete examples of local suppression of such materials, plus the deplorable ban on scientific writings until the very end of the occupation (which apparently involved bureaucratic complications in Washington, and not just Tokyo). In the three years from 1946 through 1948, a total of seven published books or articles, plus twenty-seven written testimonies, were recorded in Hiroshima, most of them appearing in 1946;
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
, 586. U.S. restrictions on scientific findings concerning the effects of the bombs were so severe that, even in the closing years of occupation, American medical investigators working with Japanese
hibakusha
for the ABCC were uninformed of the existence of earlier studies pertinent to their own research. See James N. Yamazaki, M.D., with Louis B. Fleming,
Children of the Atomic Bomb: Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the Marshall Islands
(Duke University Press, 1995).

20
.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
, 512–13.

21
. Maruki Iri and Akamatsu Toshiko (Maruki Toshi),
Pika-don
(Tokyo, 1950). The Marukis' remarkable series of collaborative paintings, which eventually extended beyond the atomic bombs to deal with such subjects as the Rape of Nanking and Auschwitz, are reproduced in Dower and Junkerman,
The Hiroshima Murals
. A documentary film of the artists' work by Junkerman and Dower, entitled
Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima
, is available from First Run Features, New York.

22
. The Marist priest Paul Glynn published a book-length homage to Nagai entitled
A Song for Nagasaki
(Hunters Hill, Australia, 1988). In Nagai's eschatology, after singling out Nagasaki, God then inspired the emperor to issue the sacred proclamation ending the war. These views emerge vividly in Glynn, esp. 115–21, but the ideological logic of the connection between the patriotic Christian visionary and erstwhile Shintoist god-emperor, who had portrayed himself as intervening to prevent the apocalypse in the surrender proclamation of August 15, 1945, is generally overlooked. Nagai's radiation sickness, incidentally, may have
been contracted from his research prior to the bombing of Nagasaki, although his suffering from the bomb is beyond dispute.

23
. For an English translation of this book, see Takashi Nagai,
The Bells of Nagasaki
, trans. William Johnston (Kodansha, 1984). Prior to
Nagasaki no Kane
, Nagai had been permitted to publish a moving, sentimental account entitled
Kono Ko o Nokoshite
(Leaving these children behind) (Tokyo, 1948), reflecting on the future of his soon-to-be-orphaned children. This became an immediate “top ten” bestseller in 1948 and remained on the top-ten list in 1949, where it was joined by
Nagasaki no Kane;
see Shiozawa Minobu,
Sh
ō
wa Besuto-ser
ā
Ses
ō
Shi
(Social history of Sh
ō
wa bestsellers) (Tokyo, 1988), 108–10.

24
. According to records compiled in Hiroshima, atomic-bomb writings pertaining to that city alone totaled 54 books, essays, and stories plus 284 testimonials from 1949 through 1951. By 1971, the total was 500 published books and short pieces and 2,234 written testimonials;
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
, 586. In 1983, major literary writings on the atomic-bomb experience were collected in a fifteen-volume series entitled
Nihon no Genbaku Bungaku
(Japanese atomic-bomb literature) (Tokyo, 1989). See also the thirty-article series on atomic-bomb literature during the occupation published in
Ch
Å«
goku Shimbun
, the leading Hiroshima-area newspaper, between June 30 and August 12, 1986. For English translations of some of this extensive literature, see Kenzabur
ō
Ō
e, ed.,
The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath
(Grove, 1985); Kyoko and Mark Selden, eds.,
The Atomic Bomb: Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
(M.E. Sharpe, 1989); and Richard H. Minear, ed. and trans.,
Hiroshima: Three Witnesses
(Princeton University Press, 1990).