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Atomic John: The Bomb as Fetish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Lawrence S. Wittner  and
D Samuels
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“Atomic John,” an intriguing article that appeared in the New Yorker on December 15, 2008, is particularly remarkable for what it reveals about the inability of some Americans to confront the consequences of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan.

On the surface, it is the story of John Coster-Mullen, a 61-year-old “truck driver” from Waukesha, Wisconsin, who, through years of painstaking effort, has succeeded better than the ostensible experts have in constructing a precise model of the weapon that annihilated Hiroshima. This is a formidable intellectual achievement, and the author of the article, David Samuels, emphasizes this fact. Moreover, Coster-Mullen has made available his findings about the bomb's technology in a self-published book and on the Internet.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 12 , December 2008 , e22
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2008