2 - Remembering the Nuclear Holocaust

Summary

Chapter 2 examines US survivors’ layered belonging as it played out on Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s ground zero in 1945. In partucular, the chapter argues that their cross-nationality remained persistent as their culture – clothes, medicines, and food – became the essential means of surviving, rescuing, and caring in the bomb’s immediate aftermath. Despite the enormous destruction that appeared to erase any human distinctions, cultural diversity and gender differences came back powerfully in the hours and days after the bomb’s explosion. Women emerged as chief caretakers of the ill and injured in the utter absence of hospitals, doctors, and nurses, crafting what might be called improvisational practices of folk medicine. Men, in contrast, felt as if it was their duty to rescue others at any cost, sometimes at the sacrifice of their own safety. Not only universality of nuclear destruction, but also uniqueness of individuals and cultures affected by it, came to light. Altogether, US survivors’ experiences are explored as a cross-cultural history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which became the basis of US survivors’ memory, identity, and activism after the war.