Abstract
In this well-researched, provocative study of the memory of the Hiroshima atomic bombing in 1945, Ran Zwigenberg presents a strikingly bleak view of the ‘global memory culture' that has shaped our remembering of the Second World War. Originating in the city's postwar effort to transform itself into the world’s peace capital, this culture of commemoration grants a particular kind of moral authority to survivors, who we have come to expect will speak about war and destruction with dignity, restraint, and transcendence. One of the book's achievements is to globalize survivors by relating them to others who have participated in the making of this ‘era of the witness' (p. 91) at least since the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1962: the survivors of the Holocaust. In so doing, the author aspires to correct an imbalance in the study of war memories. Compared to the Holocaust, on which a number of pages have been spent, Hiroshima is ‘receding' into a historical ‘periphery' (p. 9), turning into a less compelling reminder of the ultimate horror of modernity.
Using an impressive array of secondary and primary sources ranging from newspapers and interviews to institutional archives in countries including Germany, Israel and Japan, Zwigenberg depicts a history fraught with conflict. Indeed, Hiroshima's commemoration of the bomb drew fierce disagreements from its inception. While the city’s elites pursued Hiroshima's resurrection as a modern city representing peace and progress, survivors' organizations questioned why the resources for compensating their losses remained lacking. Moreover, survivors who chose to embrace the peace discourse in public were a minority, as most preferred to remain silent about their experiences. Those who expressed anger and extreme grief were quickly marginalized. The rise of the anti-nuclear movement in the mid-1950s led to an equally consequential turmoil. The activism became entangled with the politics of the Japanese Left, leading to violent confrontations in the city's Peace Park and causing resentment among survivors who wished to ‘pray quietly for the repose of the dead' (p. 104). Subsequently, debates over landmarks such as Hiroshima Castle, the A-bomb Dome, and the Peace Park brought up scarring disagreements. Many found it outlandish when the city proposed to ‘build a replica of the Statue of Liberty on the site [of the castle], as a symbol of “Hiroshima's place as a mecca for peace and gratitude to America”' (p. 131).
In three particularly original and compelling chapters (Chapters 4, 5 and 7), the author delineates various efforts to bridge the experiences of A-bomb and Holocaust survivors. Here again, conflicts remained salient, even formative. Zwigenberg persuasively argues that Robert J. Lifton, who famously studied the psychological status of Hiroshima survivors, helped define post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in effect creating a language of legitimacy for survivors' mental and moral anguish. And yet, as the author adeptly points out, the language problematically privileged politically active survivors as ‘healthier' than their non-political counterparts. In his analysis of the Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace March in 1963 and the Hiroshima-Auschwitz Committee (HAC) from 1973 onward, Zwigenberg shows how A-bomb survivors who strove to share their idealism and universalism encountered hard historical realities unique to particular localities. In Singapore, for example, survivors-turned-marchers confronted mass graves of the Chinese murdered by the Japanese during the war and questions from the local Chinese community. The HAC's attempt to establish the Auschwitz Museum in Hiroshima was enthusiastically supported by Poland that wished to equate capitalist America's bombing to Nazi atrocities. This drew criticism from Israel that was beginning to define the Holocaust as a Jewish genocide, as well as from the Arab League opposed to ‘Jewish propaganda' (p. 273).
Even as Zwigenberg maps the origins of the ‘global memory culture,' he does not recoil from its internal contradictions and omissions, a mode of inquiry that I very much admire. This attentiveness also brings up the study's shortcoming: its tendency to downplay accomplishments made out of this difficult history. The confrontational activism that disrupted the Peace Park's serenity, as well as the mainstream discourse of unity, was a catalyst for anti-nuclear movements. They culminated in not only the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) of the 1960s and 1970s, but also the Nuclear Freeze Movement that brought a million peaceful marchers to Central Park in 1982. When Edward M. Kennedy proposed the Nuclear Freeze Amendment in the same year, the Senate hearing enlisted Hiroshima survivors as witnesses. These incidents do not fit Zwigenberg's grim view that survivors' aspiration for solidarity could be ‘abused by almost anyone' (p. 295) or ‘mobilized in the service of goals detrimental to their original intent' (p. 305). Regrettably, too, there are numerous misspellings. ‘Ubuki Satoro' in ‘Hiroshima Jugakuin University' (p. xi) should be ‘Ubuki Satoru' in ‘Hiroshima Jogakuin University.' ‘Nimoto Shigeko' (p. 86), a famous Hiroshima maiden, is ‘Niimoto Shigeko,' and ‘chūkoku ha' (p. 235) should be ‘chūkaku ha.' For a study that critiques a ‘Eurocentrism' (p. 9) that has brought undeservingly scant attention to the ‘non-Western tragedy' (p. 302), these oversights are discouraging. Even so, Hiroshima deserves a wide readership for its clear eye for how profoundly local tensions shaped a transnational mode of remembering.