Memories and the State: Japanese-American Discourses on Hiroshima.

The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended and ruined lives, leading to traumatic memories. Currently, Hiroshima symbolizes a metaphor and catalyst for public anxieties over nuclear war in U.S. popular culture (Farish 2003 and Trushell 2004). The Smithsonian’s 1995 nationally funded exhibit, in response to Congressional pressure, framed Hiroshima to fit the mainstream perspective that the nuclear bombings prevented U.S. and Japanese casualties (Hubbard and Hasian 1998, and Wittner 2005). In light of this, this essay explores how discourses of Hiroshima remembrance operate in spaces not wholly controlled by considerations of U.S. national politics. Of special attention will be a collection of survivor testimony poems, Outcry from the Inferno: Atomic Bomb Tanka Anthology (1995) published by a small federally and state funded-printing press, Bamboo Ridge Press, in Hawai’i. This anthology is connected with the Japanese Diaspora communities and, while not necessarily wholly representative, shows attempts by Japanese Americans to learn about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki outside of national-level politics. This process will be analyzed in comparison to discourses in poetry from Japanese Americans who were not survivors of the attack, such as Yamada’s (1983) Dessert Run, Hongo’s (1993) “Shadow in Stone,” and the use of Hiroshima as a background to U.S. Japanese-American experience in Naomi Hirahara’s (2004) mystery novel, Summer of the Big Bachi. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]