![]() ![]() 2 Instead, the United States promoted imperialist propaganda that regarded the atomic bomb as an American scientific achievement that was crucial to ending World War II and thus bringing peace to the world, justifying the human cost of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ![]() ![]() The occupation’s mission to “democratize” Japan meant controlling the country politically and economically as a whole, and in the case of Hiroshima, a direct censorship of journalistic investigation and scientific and medical research into bomb-related damage and radiation effects on victims. The acceptance and advancement of this narrative by Japan and Hiroshima’s local leaders was essential, however enforced, for the city’s survival and growth under the American occupation that lasted until 1952. The narrative that immediately began to dominate the post-bomb climate in Japan promoted images of rebirth and new beginnings: the dawn of a new Hiroshima that was a symbol of peace and hope rather than the reality evident in its radioactive landscape, that the city was the tragic recipient of the first nuclear bomb in history. Not long after the war ended, Hiroshima quickly went from a city ravaged by the atomic bomb to the poster image of international peace. 1 With more than 70% of its buildings destroyed and its industrial sector disbanded, the city had very little of a path forward. After the war, Hiroshima was a nuclear wasteland: more than a third of its population, around 140,000 people, had perished in the explosion and the effects of radiation several days and months after the bomb. These stories came back to me when I arrived to Hiroshima, the city-turned-memorial to the event of August 6, 1945. It’s hard to unlearn what could happen to the human body when exposed to the heatwaves of a nuclear blast. In the book, six survivors of the bomb at various distances from the hypocenter recount their stories before, during, and after the explosion. A small pocket-sized book, it was hard to get through its page after page of graphic content of the first few moments and days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by the US military. One of the first things I read at the beginning of this fellowship journey was John Hersey’s Hiroshima. All photographs are by the author, except where otherwise specified. Sundus Al-Bayati is the 2019 recipient of the H. ![]()
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