Bodies of Memory

Description

THE EMOTIONALLYcharged conversations on the two sides of the Pacific over the Smithsonian Institution’s endeavor to speak to the nuclear bomb in a larger recorded setting show how profoundly American and Japanese societies are still put resources into recollections of World War II.1Each country’s”orthodox” history encompassing the utilization of the bomb presents a diametrically restricting perspective: as the Smithsonian Institution’s extreme scaling down of its display recommends, the common view among Americans is that the use of the bomb was advocated and that the bomb brought harmony. ManyJapanese, then again, contend that the bomb was a remorseless weapon that ought to never have been utilized: harmony could have been accomplished without. Each side’s portrayal of the bomb, in any case, is at last vested an ethical judgment that sentences the two nations to clashing relations.