The Age of Hiroshima

by Michael D. Gordin (Editor), G. John Ikenberry (Editor), Campbell Craig (Contribution by), Alex Wellerstein (Contribution by), Sean L. Malloy (Contribution by)

Overview

A multifaceted portrait of the Hiroshima bombing and its many legacies

On August 6, 1945, in the waning days of World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The city's destruction stands as a powerful symbol of nuclear annihilation, but it has also shaped how we think about war and peace, the past and the present, and science and ethics. The Age of Hiroshima traces these complex legacies, exploring how the meanings of Hiroshima have reverberated across the decades and around the world.

Michael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry bring together leading scholars from disciplines ranging from international relations and political theory to cultural history and science and technology studies, who together provide new perspectives on Hiroshima as both a historical event and a cultural phenomenon. As an event, Hiroshima emerges in the flow of decisions and hard choices surrounding the bombing and its aftermath. As a phenomenon, it marked a revolution in science, politics, and the human imagination—the end of one age and the dawn of another.

The Age of Hiroshima reveals how the bombing of Hiroshima gave rise to new conceptions of our world and its precarious interconnectedness, and how we continue to live in its dangerous shadow today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691193441
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	01/14/2020
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Michael D. Gordin is the Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton University. His books include Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War (Princeton). G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton and a Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea. His books include Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1 Introduction: Hiroshima's Legacies Michael D. Gordin G. John Ikenherry 1

Part I Decisions and Choices

2 The Atom Bomb as Policy Maker: FDR and the Road Not Taken Campbell Craig 19

3 The Kyoto Misconception: What Truman Knew, and Didn't Know, about Hiroshima Alex Wellerstein 34

4 "When You Have to Deal with a Beast": Race, Ideology, and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb Sean L. Malloy 56

5 Racing toward Armageddon? Soviet Views of Strategic Nuclear War, 1955-1972 David Holloway 71

6 The Evolution of Japanese Politics and Diplomacy under the Long Shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1974-1991 Takuya Sasaki 89

Part II Movements and Resistances

7 The Bandung Conference and the Origins of Japans Atoms for Peace Aid Program for Asian Countries Shinsuke Tomotsugu 109

8 India in the Early Nuclear Age Srinath Raghavan 129

9 The Unnecessary Option to Go Nuclear: Japan's Nonnuclear Policy in an Era of Uncertainty, 1950s-1960s Wakana Mukai 144

10 Nuclear Revolution and Hegemonic Hierarchies: How Global Hiroshima Played Out in South America Matias Spektor 164

11 Remembering War, Forgetting Hiroshima: "Euroshima" and the West German Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movements in the Cold War Holger Nehring 179

12 Hiroshima, Nanjing, and Yasukuni: Contending Discourses on the Second World War in Japan Kiichi Fujiwara 201

Part III Revolutions and Transformations

13 The End of the Beginning: China and the Consolidation of the Nuclear Revolution Avery Goldstein 221

14 Data, Discourse, and Disruption: Radiation Effects and Nuclear Orders Sonja D. Schmid 243

15 Nuclear Harms and Global Disarmament Shampa Biswas 259

16 The Legacy of the Nuclear Taboo in the Twenty-First Century Nina Tannenwald 276

17 History and the Unanswered Questions of the Nuclear Age: Reflections on Assumptions, Uncertainty, and Method in Nuclear Studies Francis J. Gavin 294

Notes 313

List of Contributors 395

Index 399

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The Age of Hiroshima is a unique and innovative collection of original articles that together brilliantly make the point that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki created a new international order with new dangers and new ways of thinking. There is no better text to help students understand the profound influence of nuclear weapons on the global environment. It should be required reading in every history and political science curriculum."—Martin J. Sherwin, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, author of A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies

"This important book deftly examines the wide range of meanings attached to the atomic destruction of Hiroshima in August 1945. Gordin and Ikenberry bring together some of the very best scholars writing about nuclear weapons and nuclear energy today."—Scott D. Sagan, author of The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons

"This impressively broad and richly interdisciplinary book explores the evolving legacies of Hiroshima across the globe and over time. It is essential reading for those who study our nuclear past, present, and future."—Elizabeth N. Saunders, Georgetown University

Editorial Reviews

"A valuable contribution."—-Mattias Eken, U.S. Studies Online

From the Publisher