The institute was born in the controversy around the exhibit that would be held at the air and space museum at this facility and instituted but was canceled. This was an attempt by the smithsonian and to do an honest and balanced exhibit about the decision to drop the bomb and the consequences of the bombing. This was the 50th anniversary. I was with one of my students whose mother and grandmother survived the atomic bombing, and whose grandfather died in the atomic bombing. We decided to do Something Special to commemorate the 50th anniversary. We would teach two classes on campus and bring students to kyoto and hiroshima. The museums in hiroshima and nagasaki asked if we would bring some of the artifacts to American University and do an exhibit on the 50th anniversary. That was the first time the oshimadown the psyche abomb museumsaki did any exhibit outside of japan. It was the 20th anniversary of anniversary of the original bombing, so we decided to do it again. We combined artifacts from nagasaki with six of these fabulous panels. These are historic panels. That can be compared to picasso or other classic paintings paintings of that this is the first time they have been to the United States anywhere since 1995. We brought them here and put them with these artifacts. Childrens them with drawings on the Elementary School and hiroshima. In hiroshima. That was the origin of the exhibit in 1995. 20 years later we have a more elaborate exhibit that is the most elaborate exhibit on the atomic bombings in the United States. It is overwhelming. This is one of the most famous images out of nagasaki. This is a young girl. She looks dazed. Ball thatding a rice the rescue party had given her. There is blood on her face. She has a look in her eyes, a forlorn, distant gaze. She did not know what happened to her. She did not know what had occurred. Some of the people who lived through the bombing, they were sure the bomb had landed on their house. Saw allt out i and they of hiroshima or nagasaki was ablaze. Panels see one of the called the fire, what it was like for the survivors, engulfed in flames. Next to this, we have a crucifix. There are a lot of suffixes that are considered symbolic, especially nagasaki. In nagasaki, the bomb missed the original target by almost two thes and landed above cathedral. Nagasaki had not been bombed before this. It had been preserved in pristine condition along with a few other cities because the americans wanted to have a pristine target to show the effects of the bomb. People of nagasaki thought they had not been bombed because it was the christian capital of japan and east asia. They were in for a big surprise. Bomb dropped on top of their cathedral. Also, we see the stopwatch there that shows 8 15. That is a very popular image in hiroshima. Also, it dropped at 11 02 in nagasaki. We did our first exhibit in 1995. Many of those replicas were the original artifacts. Some of them are so fragile that the museum decided not to let them out of japan anymore. For that reason, we have got the replicas instead of the originals. Almost everything is the original artifacts. What weve got here are the famous mushroom clouds, photographs of the mushroom andds in hiroshima nagasaki. The descriptions of them from people on the plane, like a pillar of flame shot up into the air and kept expanding. From the top of the column, the pillar, you see these additional bursts, and they just keep going up. Estimates of 40,000 feet into the sky. The crew of the unit said they could see the cloud from four hours away. They could still see the cloud, looking back, it was so high. There was a lot of radioactive debris swept up in the cloud. Some of that came down as black rain. Here, we have got the view of hiroshima city. The target for the bomb was here , the tshaped bridge. They thought the pilots would be able to see the bridge clearly from the sky. The bomb drifted and missed the target and landed over here above shima hospital. This is probably the most famous symbol, the Old Industrial prefecture building, now called the atomic bomb dome. There was debate about whether to preserve it. This has all been built up. This part here and here have been preserved as a peace park. You can see everything is devastated. They estimated that almost two miles in each direction was totally destroyed. Two miles away, you would be badly burned. Your house could have been destroyed. This was by modern standards a tiny, primitive little bomb. The bomb we dropped on hiroshima we estimate to be 16 kilotons. The bomb that dropped on nagasaki was 21 to 22 kilotons of destructive capacity. Weve developed bombs that are so much bigger. By 1954, we were Holding Congressional hearings on projects on dial with plans for bombs 700,000 times as powerful as they share shima the hiroshima bomb. This is what we knew. This is what this little bomb did at hiroshima. Take a look at what the bomb did on nagasaki. This bomb was a little bit bigger, but the casualties were actually smaller. Nagasaki was surrounded by this mound on both sides. The effect of the bomb was contained by the mountains. Nagasaki was in the valley between the mountains. The hiroshima bomb, the estimate is about 150,000 dead by the end of 1945 and 200,000 dead by 1950. The estimates for nagasaki are 70,000 dead by the end of 1945. 140,000 dead by 1950. Uraniumshima bomb was a bomb and nagasaki was a plutonium bomb. They were different kinds of bombs. Here, weve got some of the more human artifacts, in a way. Youve got the shoe of a young student, 13yearold boy who was killed in the bombing. Youve got the hat of a Junior High School student who was killed. You have the water bottle of a young boy, 13yearold who was killed when the bomb exploded. Here, weve got one of the replicas. A replica of the lunchbox from a 12yearold girl who totally disappeared. No trace ever found of her. Inside, carbonized rice and tea. Her mother was able to identify that as her, even though she could not find her daughter. Back in 1995, if they wanted to cancel the big likeenola gay visit, we suggested two artifacts. The enola gay and this lunchbox. We thought that this would send a message. That was the last thing they wanted to display. They wanted artifacts about the victims, photographs of the victims, statements by American Military leaders. They did not want that controversy. Here was a more historical panel. As a historian, i would like a whole exhibit about the context about the decision to drop the bomb. It would have made a more buoying exhibit, probably. This has the Important Information about the manhattan project. They started to build the bomb in case the germans built the bomb. They were terrified at the hitler getting an atomic bomb. We built the bomb as a deterrent against germany. They did not anticipate it might be used against japan. They did not have the capability of building a bomb. This is a survey of the bombing targets. These are potential targets. Remember. The United States had been firebombing japanese cities since march 9 through 10th. That was when we firebombed tokyo. Three quarters of our bombs were incendiary. Overall, we bombed over 100 japanese cities. When we ran out of important major cities, we started bombing secondary cities. The destruction reached 99. 5 of the city. Some of the american leaders were appalled. Secretary of war stimson said i do not want the u. S. To get the reputation for outdoing hitlers hitlers when it comes another top general described this as one of the most ruthless and barbaric killing of noncombatants in history. This is about the decision to drop the bomb. We have got a section about the reasons for using the bomb. The official narratives has stated the decision to drop the bomb was to expedite the end of the war. Truman says that an American Invasion would cost a half lives. Million the number keeps going up. There is no record of that anywhere. There would have been a lot of americans lost in an invasion. A lot of japanese killed. That is the official narrative. That we dropped the bomb to avoid an invasion. The bomb ended the war in the pacific. There is no truth to that. In toittle too not be a little truth in that in trumans mind. The japanese from the battle of saipan onward new they cannot win. They hoped to get one more victory for better surrender terms. The big obstacle was the emperor. They wanted to make sure they can keep the emperor. Macarthur issued a report in 1945 that says the hanging of the emperor to them would be like the crucifixion of christ to us. All would fight to die like ants. Almost every advisor of truman urged him to change the surrender terms. Let the japanese know that they can keep the emperor. That was in americas interest. America planned all along to keep the emperor, but we refused to signal that. We were calling for unconditional surrender. What else would end the war . At yalta, roosevelt finally got a promise from stalin that three months after the end of the war in europe, a big massive red army was going to come to the war against japan. Truman met with churchill and stalin to make sure the soviets were coming in. He gets the agreement from the soviets the first day of the conference. He writes in his journal stalin , will be in the japanese war by august 15. He writes home to his wife the next day and says the russians are coming in, the war will end a year sooner. Think of all the boys who will not be killed. He described the intercepted july 18 telegram as the telegram from the japanese emperor asking for peace. We knew that. American intelligence reported repeatedly that the entry of the soviet union into the war will convince all japanese that complete defeat is inevitable. The question is, why truman who is not bloodthirsty he did not take leisure in killing pleasure in killing people. Why would he used the atomic bomb knowing they were not militarily necessary . What we assume as historians is that a big part of his motivation was that he was sending a message to the soviets. If the soviets interfered with american plans in europe or in asia, this is the fate they would get. The astounding thing is that the soviets interpreted it that way. A physicist said suddenly, the day of judgment was tomorrow. It has been ever since. That is the reality. That is what makes the atomic bombing so important, not just that hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children were killed unnecessarily, but the fact that the human species has to live with this sort of damocles hanging over our has our head ever since. We still have 16,000 Nuclear Weapons in the world. Weve had this conflict with the russians over ukraine. U. S. And russia still have thousands of Nuclear Weapons pointed at each other. We are not playing games here. The threat is still real, which is why we wanted to do this exhibit. There were apparently several people carrying cameras in hiroshima on august 6. Only one is known to have taken photos. He was a photographer with hiroshimas newspaper. He had enough film to take my 24 take 24 photos. He said it was too horrible. He ended up taking seven photos and five of them had been preserved. He was very respectful. He did not want to show horrible burns or horrible suffering. He shows people at the relief stations, who had escaped the fire downtown. You can see the fire in the background, destruction everywhere. He says it was like walking through hell. He says we could not take photos. It was too horrific and too intrusive on peoples privacy and suffering. This shows some people with no medical supplies. Almost all of the doctors were killed. The nurses the hospitals were destroyed. The nurses were killed. What you see here are people in these relief stations there was no medicine, nothing to treat them. They put oil on the burns. People were reporting maggots on the wounds. A shot from nagasaki, people lying there dying on the mattresses. A woman breastfeeding her baby. There were lots of stories of women carrying around dead babies on their backs. You have images of charred corpses. People who were near the hypo center, their internal organs boiled away and they quickly turned into charcoal and became carbonized. You see the bodies, clothes burned off the bodies. The charred corpses. Some of the people who wore kimonos had patterns burned into their skin. The shadow of somebody who disappeared. He was sitting there. I have one friend in nagasaki who speaks to our group. He survived, obviously. He writes down the names of all of his family members and how far they were. Not a single one was affected by the bomb, injured or burned by the bomb. One by one, he crosses them out. This is over the next couple weeks. One by one would die from radiation poisoning. You would get these purple spots all over your body, terrible diarrhea, your hair would start to fall out. He become sick. I know of cases in which family members or friends came into hiroshima looking for relatives or friends and within several days after, they would die of radiation sickness. Some experts say the effects of radiation were gone quickly. Theres a lot of evidence to suggest that was not the case. This is the shima hospital. It was above the shima hospital where the bomb detonated. This is the Elementary School in nagasaki. Almost all the teachers and students were killed. 3 10 of a mile from the center. Students there every year on the morning of august 9, go to a private ceremony at the Elementary School. All the children who now attend the Elementary School come there and have this special peace commemoration ceremony with this school filled with Elementary School students. You realize that is who the victims of the atomic bomb were. After the war, congregants of all souls church, Unitarian Church in washington dc sent art supplies to students at the Elementary School in hiroshima. The students used the art supplies at a time when there were very little supplies of any sort in hiroshima or nagasaki after the bombing. You see reports of students living as street urchins. They were orphaned. They did not have shelter. They had makeshift shelters. Just getting art supplies was a huge thing. In gratitude, they sent back drawings and paintings to the congregation at alsos church. Church. Ouls i understand these were lost for a long time and then rediscovered. The members of the church went back to hiroshima recently and met with some of the kids. There is a nice documentary about this. [speaking japanese] i thought it would add a nice touch to the exhibit. More of a human side in a different way of americans who reached out to the people of hiroshima and the gratitude on the part of the children who received those gifts. The narukis were famous japanese artists who came into the city of hiroshima three days after the atomic bombing and saw the horrors and decided to do a series of panels to depict the horrors of hiroshima. The first one was called ghosts. What it shows is the image of hiroshima afterwards. People who experienced it said they felt as though they were walking through hell. Fires everywhere, people naked, walking with their arms held in front of them. Peoples clothes were burned off. People are walking in this procession of naked people. He could not tell men from women, as you are walking. You see this image here, the shock, the horror, the suffering in hiroshima after the bombings. The second panel we have here is called fire. The fire was spreading rapidly. People tried to escape the fire. This was the reality for so many survivors. It meant they would have to leave others behind. They would have to ignore their cries for help, pleas of people trapped in their houses, under beams. People who were injured in order to escape. There are so many tragic stories of children leaving their parents behind or parents leaving their children behind in order to escape because the flames were encroaching. There are stories of people staying with relatives or friends rather than leave. The folks at the gallery told me i could choose any six of the 15 panels i want. I decided i wanted to complicate the narrative. Not to portray the japanese as victims of the atomic bomb, but put it in a different context. To show that it was possible for them to be victims but also victimizers at the same time. The first one here is called crows. August 6,ust as there were 3000 citizens, 43,000 japanese soldiers and 45,000 korean slave laborers. The koreans were badly treated by the japanese and had been for decades. They were discriminated against in japan and also discriminated against after the atomic bombing. They got almost no medical treatment, no aid at all and many of them died in the streets. This shows the crows coming down and plucking out the eyeballs of the dead korean victims here. It is very controversial inside japan still. Shinzo abe the Prime Minister and his administration is doing everything they can to cover up the history of japanese atrocities towards the korean comfort women, the citizens of victims across asia of japanese colonialism and oppression. I want to show that part of it too. To complicate it further, this was about the american pows. There were pows in a camp in hiroshima, 23 of them in the bombing. Many of them survived the bombing only to be beaten to death by enraged japanese citizens. This shows the americans beaten by the japanese after the bombing. And there are several within depicted among the american pows. There were no women there. This to me is somewhat baffling why they chose to do so. What we are seeing here is a progression in thinking. In the beginning, they focused just on japanese victims in hiroshima. Then the consciousness began expanding. They started to show the japanese as also victimizers. They have one panel on the rape of nanjing, one on auschwitz. They are trying to make this a broader human story. This one was done in 1968. Floating lantern. We participate on the evening of august 6 in the floating lantern ceremony. So many of the people jumped in the river to try to escape the flames or cool their bodies if they had been badly burned. Many of them died. All of the descriptions of the river was that it was just a sea of floating corpses. What the people did in hiroshima to commemorate, they hold the lantern ceremony every year. We are now able to participate. It is no longer restricted to the families of the victims. You make a paper lantern, put a candle inside and on the lantern, you write a message of peace or whatever you like and you go down and take your turn and put your floating lantern into the water. It is very beautiful at night. One year i went there, yoyo ma was playing. It it made it even more special. This is a depiction of the lanterns floating in the river. Youre watching American History tv covering history cspan style with event coverage, eyewitness account, archival films, lectures and College Class rooms and visits to museums and historic places. All weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. The cspans city tour travels the country, exploring the american story. Weve been to more than 200 communities across the nation. Like Many Americans are staff is staying close to home due to the coronavirus. Next, a look at our one of our cities tour visits
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.