Masters Thesis A Cloud of Unknowing Atom

A CLOUD OF UNKNOWING:

ATOMIC THINKING WITH BENJAMIN AND BATAILLE ON THE VIOLENCE OF REPRESENTATIONAL ENCLOSURES

by

Julie Hawks

A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of North Carolina at Charlotte in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

Religious Studies

Charlotte

Approved by:

______________________________ Dr. Joanne Robinson

______________________________ Dr. Kent Brintnall

______________________________ Dr. Joseph Winters ______________________________ Dr. Joseph Winters

©2013 Julie Hawks ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©2013 Julie Hawks ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ABSTRACT

JULIE HAWKS. A cloud of unknowing: Atomic thinking with Benjamin and Bataille on the violence of representational enclosures. (Under the direction of DR. JOANNE ROBINSON)

What are the ethical implications of what and how we, as Americans, remember the bombing of Hiroshima? Historical narratives strive for closure in an attempt to control how we understand the past, present, and future. Ethics and morality, by definition, rely on closed systems of meaning that dictate right and wrong. The very existence of the system propagates violence. Walter Benjamin’s and Georges Bataille’s projects promp t us to consider a new ethics unhinged from society’s mandated norms— an ethics that springs from the instant or the “now” of the individual’s experience. Their writings convey a conviction that our current system of morality cannot lead us into a nonviolent future. In this thesis, I use Hiroshima as a case study to explore both the writings of Benjamin and Bataille, and to explore as well Alain Resnais’ two films Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) and Hiroshima mon amour. In doing so, I examine what an apophatic history might look like, and in what way a practice of seeing could benefit us.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis would not have been possible without the guidance and encouragement I received from Drs. Joseph Winters, Kent Brintnall, and Joanne Robinson. Their dedication to quality and their exemplary teaching methods greatly influenced my academic study. They could not have better prepared me for the work of this thesis or my future academic endeavors. I would like to thank Dr. Winters for introducing me to the writings of Walter Benjamin and Toni Morrison, which have shaped my thinking around historical and trauma narratives. I need to thank Dr. Brintnall for his contagious love for Georges Bataille and the transgressive, both of which have forever altered how I view the world. Most importantly, I must thank Dr. Robinson, who is my mentor for teaching and research, and my friend.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Religious Studies Department for showing their confidence in me by providing financial support through a Graduate Teaching Assistantship.

Finally, I must thank everyone who kept me (almost) sane over the course of the previous year: Joshua Turner and Mary Hamner for making me laugh until I cried; Angela Hodges and Joye Palmer for always lending a sympathetic ear; Ilya Merlin for showing me that I could, actually, be more stressed; and last, but not least, my husband Reg Aubry who is continually sensible sensitive enough to provide closeness and distance at all the right times.

INTRODUCTION

FIGURE 1: Mushroom cloud, somewhere over Japan, 1945 1 The mushroom cloud stands as the icon for Hiroshima as the first nuclear

destruction of a human society. 2 Hiroshima and Nagasaki are conflated into this singular representation, the only identifiable image of these cities ’ decimation for most

Americans. Absolute U.S. censorship in Japan suppressed photographic evidence of human suffering for a decade following the bombing (and much longer for classified materials). Press censorship in post-war Japan applied to all aspects of cultural

1 August 9, 1945, the bombing of Nagasaki. 2 It should be noted here that the image of the mushroom cloud is the view of the oppressor: the famous

documented photograph captured from the third U.S. military plane named Necessary Evil that flew alongside the Enola Gay. The view from the ground witnessed by the victims of the bombings was that of

a bright flash of light (pika) and a pillar of fire followed by ash and black radioactive rain.

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production, including films, children 3 ’s books, and music. To complicate matters further, these strict censorship measures concerning the bombing and its human effects curtailed

public discussion, especially among the residents of Hiroshima. Additional propaganda added to these silencing measures determined how survivor s’ stories were then told and, in turn, cast how the world would come to understand Hiroshima and the United States. 4

An American documentary film crew recorded color images, which were then ordered by the United States military to be locked away for forty years. 5 Testimonies of atrocity were silenced by death, trauma, and censorship. That cloud of unknowing continues today.

The title of this thesis is a nod to The Cloud of Unknowing, a fourteenth century spiritual guide on contemplative prayer. The underlying message of that work suggests that the only way to truly “know” God is to abandon all preconceived notions and beliefs (knowledge) about God, and to have the courage to surrender one ’s self to “unknowing,” so that the true nature of God will become visible. So it is with the “history” of Hiroshima. 6 Real knowledge is built on completeness, but history is in motion as long as

3 Occupation censorship forbade criticism of the United States as well as other Allied nations. Even the mention of censorship itself was forbidden. Robert Karl Manoff, "The Media: nuclear secrecy vs.

democracy," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 40, no. 1 (1984): 28. All publishable materials fell under strict censorship, including films, children’s books, and musical recordings. Tanka poet Shione Shoda was threatened with the death penalty if she published her collection of poems. Kyo Maclear, Beclouded Visions: Hiroshima-Nagasaki and the Art of Witness (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999), 42. This meant that “Occupation censorship was even more exasperating than Japanese military censorship had been because it insisted that all traces of censorsh ip be concealed.” David M. Rosenfeld, Dawn to the West (New York: Henry Holt, 1984), 967, quoting from Donald Keene in Unhappy Soldier: Hino Ashihei and Japanese World War II Literature , 86.

4 Propaganda and censorship play a role even today in how the atomic bombing is allowed to be represented, as will be seen in the discussion about the failed Enola Gay exhibit in Washington, D.C.

5 Greg Mitchell, "For 64th Anniversary: The Great Hiroshima Cover-Up -- And the Nuclear Fallout for All of Us Today," Huffington Post, August 6 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/for-64th-

anniversary-the_b_252752.html (accessed March 9, 2013). 6 Or any history, for that matter.

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people are alive to add to it. Therefore, what historical knowledge do we actually have, and what are we to do with that knowledge?

Suppose in a conversation about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima someone says: “The only ethical response to this traumatic episode is to try to understand what happened as clearly and comprehensively as possible. We need to make sense of this event! ” How do (and should) we, as Americans, understand and remember the bombing of Hiroshima?

What are the ethical implications of what and how we remember —the memory and trauma of —this event? This thesis is my response to these questions.

Susan Sontag, in her book Regarding the Pain of Others, sums up the frame of reference from which my thesis is positioned: Which atrocities from the incurable past do we think we are obliged to revisit? . . .

Probably, if we are Americans, we think that it would be morbid to go out of our way to look at pictures of burnt victims of atomic bombing or the napalmed flesh of the civilian victims of the American war on Vietnam. . . The acknowledgment of the American use of disproportionate firepower in war (in violation of one of the cardinal laws of war) is very much not a national project. A museum devoted to the history of America ’s wars . . . that fairly presented the arguments for and against using the atomic bomb in 1945 on the Japanese cities, with photographic evidence that showed what those weapons did, would be regarded —now more than ever 7 —as a most unpatriotic enterprise.

Sontag questions our personal and societal responsibility to view photographic evidence of atrocity. The individual, however, may choose to turn away from any image that makes him or her feel bad: “In a modern life—a life in which there is a superfluity of things to which we are invited to pay attention —it seems normal to turn away from images that simply make us feel bad.” 8 It is not a national priority to educate American

7 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 93-94. 8 Ibid., 116.; William James claims that it is perfectly natural for people to want to remain within the

illusion that death and indecencies do not exist: illusion that death and indecencies do not exist:

citizens about the questionable and unlawful tactics that the U.S. military repeatedly executes against our foreign neighbors. On the contrary, high-ranking members of our government and military actively engage with media establishments to misinform the public through patriotic rhetoric and consumerist advertising. Propaganda and misdirection are understandable, albeit unscrupulous, strategies incorporated by institutions fearing their own waning power. In other words, in the interest of maintaining a positive and cohesive identity in the world, it is not conducive for a country to allow or even encourage contradictory information or questioning. This reality presents the individual with the unenviable choice to conform and remain safely within the confines of the Nation, or to question the available information and put everything at risk. The individual willing to take that risk and ask for more (or conflicting) information than what society willingly offers is then faced with the dilemma of confronting unpleasant realizations and guilt, which jeopardize personal and national identity with the peril of also being labeled unpatriotic. 9

In order to discuss ethical responses to remembering and understanding the bombing of Hiroshima, I include concrete examples of how Americans have remembered this event ever since President Truman ’s radio address on August 6, 1945. There is no single remembrance, although official military statements have varied little over the

The systematic cultivation of healthy-mindedness as a religious attitude is therefore consonant with important currents in human nature, and is anything but absurd. In fact, we all do cultivate it more or less, even when our professed theology should in consistency forbid it. We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can; and the slaughterhouses and indecencies without end on which our life is founded are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer and cleaner and better than the world that really is.

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (Megalondon Entertainment, 2008), 77.

9 This course of action is in essence the crux of Bataille’s project.

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years: We gave Japan every opportunity to surrender and they refused. . . The bomb had to be dropped in order to bring a speedy end to the war, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. . . Dropping the atomic bomb allowed the Japanese to “save face” in their inevitable surrender. . . Japan would not have surrendered so quickly if Hiroshima and

Nagasaki had not been bombed with atomic weapons. 10 The media has played a central role in disseminating official U.S. government

narratives about the event, as well as manipulating contesting viewpoints. Film (both documentaries and fictional accounts), literature, photographs, museum exhibits and public demonstrations against the exhibits, and news stories in popular magazines and newspapers have helped to mold public opinion. In order to maintain focus in this thesis,

I will address only a thimbleful of these responses. I will present a number of “facts” related to the bombing. The reader will see, however, that even uncontested facts are challenged by how those facts are remembered. The principal information that will be explored in this thesis include Truman ’s announcement of the bombing; repeatedly published photographs of the bombing and its effects; John Hersey ’s August 1946 article published in The New Yorker, “Hiroshima;” and Alain Resnais’ two films Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) and Hiroshima mon amour. The writings of Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille provide the primary theories I use to analyze the events of, as well as

10 Modern scholarship has successfully challenged these narratives, but it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the details of the refutations. However, I will state that the official findings of the U.S. Strategic

Bomb Survey Report that was published less than a year following the attack stated that Japan would have surrendered even without the bomb:

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic

bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.

United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Summary Report (Pacific War) , July 1, 1946. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/fulltext.php?fulltextid=

29 (accessed February 5, 2013).

the responses to, the atomic bombing. Other prominent voices included in this thesis are those of Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Alain Resnais, and Marguerite Duras, all of whose writings contest common notions of seeing and remembrance.

I chose the writings of Benjamin and Bataille as the theoretical framework for this thesis for two important reasons. 11 First, both writers offer insights that stem from

mystical approaches. The form of mysticism they illustrate in their writings ties into arguments I put forward in this thesis and echoes similar language found in trauma literature. This connection is important because the political arguments both writers explicate within the bounds of mystical understanding appear to align with the narratives of memory and trauma I am addressing in this thesis. This mysticism/negative theology/apophaticism framework also connects straightforwardly with what I find powerful and generative in Resnais’ films and how all three (Bataille, Benjamin, and Resnais) appear to approach the memory of certain events. Second, Benjamin and Bataille both focus much of their efforts on critiquing society’s inclination towards fascism, suggesting ways to counter that inclination and its effects. I incorporate their writings as a perspective to examine popular media artifacts and narratives that Americans use to remember Hiroshima and to examine the films and literature that challenge what and how we remember.

This thesis does not offer a comprehensive analysis of all available literature on the subject, nor does it focus on the Japanese or international response to the atomic bombings. My intention with this thesis is to explore how Americans, as the perpetrators

11 Allan Stoekl, in a footnote to his introduction to Visions of Excess, points out that there are many parallels between the projects of Bataille and Benjamin. Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected

Writings, 1927-1939 , trans. Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1985), xxv.

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of the atrocities suffered by the residents of Hiroshima, have understood and remembered the bombing and its subsequent effects. I limit my focus to American narratives for several reasons. First, I wanted to show that reducing the remembrance of Hiroshima to the narratives of a single society still presents a very complex recollection. Even within the constraints of “the American narrative” we can see that there is no single story. Second, as I was researching information for this thesis, I noticed a recurring “call for peace” in response to the bombings that appeared across most of the literature that I had read. I was fascinated that the city of Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first nuclear attack, would come to be known as the “City of Peace.” Even Japan’s memorial museum dedicated to the atrocity is named the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I wanted to see if I could trace this perspective back to American narratives. And f inally, Bataille’s writings inspire a desire in me to consider the American remembrance of Hiroshima from

a “guilty” perspective. 12

I found it necessary to include a few specific responses to the Holocaust that have impacted how we currently remember Hiroshima. Just as the nuclear annihilation of Nagasaki conflates into two singular representations —the image of a mushroom cloud and the name “Hiroshima”—the Holocaust conflates into the image of a gas chamber and the name “Auschwitz.” Throughout this thesis, I refer to these metonyms, “Hiroshima” and “Auschwitz,” as signs pointing to much larger and complicated histories. Again, my responses are not all-inclusive, but are incorporated in order to reveal the complex and

12 Inner Experience and Guilty and several essays compiled within Visions of Excess address Bataille’s contemplations before and during World War II. These writings act to disrupt the reader’s notions of self

and knowing and are useful for reassessing narratives of “justified” aggression, such as those propagated in American politics.

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dynamic nature of collective remembrances of these traumatic events, especially those contesting shared culpability.

Hiroshima and Auschwitz are inextricably intertwined on many levels above and beyond being time-bound within World War II. Over the course of the war, the involved nations’ militaries exhibited an ever-increasing propensity to target civilian populations for their own political gains. Americans, for the most part, seem more capable of discussing Auschwitz because we do not view ourselves as the perpetrators; rather we view ourselves as the liberators. This view can be located within our master narratives. We can look at films and objects housed within museums that deal with Auschwitz from

a purportedly less biased (or rather, guilty) position. 13 By exploring our relationship with these narratives, we are offered tools that enable us to better decipher how we understand

Hiroshima. One specific example to consider is Alain Resnais ’ poignant documentary, Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) (1955), which focuses on the ethics of memory related to the Nazi death camps, because it greatly influenced future narratives integrated by

Holocaust museums and films, as well as his own succeeding film Hiroshima mon amour 14 .

I wanted to include a chapter that addressed American responses to the Vietnam War in relation to how we think about Hiroshima in order to show how changing political climates contribute to radical changes in the positioning of official historical narratives.

13 Using metaphor from Georges Batail le’s writing, we are blinded if we try to look directly at the sun. In this vein, to directly look at all Hiroshima represents, our guilt would be too overwhelming. Instead, we

must look indirectly in order to begin to comprehend what Hiroshima means. I interpret this meaning from Georges Bataille, "Rotten Sun," in Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, trans. Allan Stoekl (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1985), 57-58.

14 Another connection between these films and the theme of this thesis lies in the imagery of clouds (specifically the mushroom cloud) and fog (in relation to the Nazi Night and Fog Decree). Within the fire

of the atomic blast and the crematorium ovens, people, and the knowledge of their whereabouts, literally vanished without a trace.

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Although Vietnam may seem quite removed from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, these separate American invasions are irrevocably entangled. Over and above the obvious racial bigotries that contributed to the unrepentant acts of aggression and violence overseas and at home on American soil, it was not until the 1970s, when America’s military suffered world-wide humiliation in the wake of the Vietnam War, that strong revisionist rhetoric became a vocal part of American politics. 15 In other words, the

official American narrative about Hiroshima began to change following our defeat in Vietnam. And although a thorough evaluation would help enrich the arguments in my thesis, I felt it was necessary to restrict my arguments to Hiroshima and the Holocaust in order to remain within the time constraints of writing this paper.

My analysis of how Americans think about Hiroshima begins with the notion that what we commonly accept as history is actually a particular understanding of myth. I argue that history is a plural, open, ever-changing system, whereas this singular form of myth posits an image of an idea whose purpose is to be swallowed whole. 16 This is not to

suggest that myths do not engage various interpretations. Claude Lévi-Strauss points out that there is not much separation between those narratives that are viewed as history and

15 Over 100,000 American citizens of Japanese descent were ordered into isolated internment camps and had their homes and businesses confiscated after Pearl Harbor was bombed. No such large-scale action

targeted Americans of German or Italian ancestry during the war. 16 Claude Lévi- Strauss writes: “Mythology is static, we find the same mythical elements combined over and

over again, but they are in a closed system, let us say, in contradistinction with history, which is, of course, an open system.” Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture (New York: Schocken Books, 1995 [1978]), 40. Additionally, Andrew Robinson points out in an article about Barthes that “the reader does not construct meaning while reading [myths], the meaning is given in full.” Andrew Robinson, "Roland Bart hes’s Mythologies: A Critical Theory of Myths," Ceasefire Magazine (September

30, 2011). http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-barthes-2/ (accessed January 18, 2013).

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those understood as myth. 17 He supports this view of history as an open system by noting that individual myth cells can be rearranged in order to offer new meaning. 18 In some

respects, this understanding of myth (that of the individual myth cell) equates to the notion of ideology, but myth is more complicated than that.

All narratives cover over the experience of “what really happened,” whether those narratives are considered mythical or historical. Lévi-Strauss suggests that modern aims for historical narratives function similarly to those of mythology: “to ensure that as closely as possible —complete closeness is obviously impossible—the future will remain faithful to the present and to the past.” 19 In other words, even modern historical narratives strive for closure in an attempt to control how we understand the past, present, and future. It is such closure that Benjamin, Bataille, Resnais, Duras, and Barthes contest.

Closure suggests origins. I argue in this thesis that the power of how we remember historical events lies in the telling of its origins. The struggle for closure is also a fight for where to begin the narrative. With this in mind, I include a discussion of creation myths. Creation myths are considered sacred accounts of events found in many

17 Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning, 34-43. Lévi- Strauss’ insights in Myth and Meaning align with Bataille’s and Benjamin’s writings in many ways. He points out that new meaning is generated by

arranging and rearranging myth cells, not unlike Benjamin’s writings on collections. Also, in the introduction to Myth and Meaning Lévi-Strauss writes:

I never had, and still do not have, the perception of feeling my personal identity. I appear to myself as the place where something is going on, but there is no “I”, no “me.” Each of us is a kind of crossroads where things happen. The crossroads is purely passive; something happens there. A different thing, equally valid, happens elsewhere. There is no choice, it is just a matter of chance.

This passage, in many respects, echoes Bataille’s writings in Inner Experience, where on page 116 Bataille asserts that he does not write fr om the space of the “I”. Also, in another essay “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” Bataille writes about chance as the guiding factor in life. And finally, Lévi-Strauss’ passage echoes writings by both Benjamin and Bataille where they write about flashes, moments, instants, and

ruptures where/when something happens. Ibid., 3-4. 18 Ibid., 40.

19 Ibid., 43.

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religious traditions. They are often set in what historian of religion Mircea Eliade termed as in illo tempore ( “at that time”). Eliade states, “Every origin myth narrates and justifies

a “new situation”—new in the sense that it did not exist from the beginning of the World 20 . ” All creation myths speak to deeply meaningful questions held by the society

that shares them, revealing a central worldview for the identity of the culture and its individual members. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the unrivaled event eradicating life, delivered humanity into the Nuclear Age and helped to solidify the narrative of

American exceptionalism as a national Christian myth. 21 This discussion of history versus myth extends in this thesis from here into the

first chapter, followed by the entire second chapter devoted to the opposition. In the first chapter, history is equated with the idea that something “really happened” at Hiroshima and that America had an investment in censoring, containing, and even distorting those events so that it could create and maintain its myth of America as the bringer of peace.

The reader will likely conclude from my arguments that we are able to know what really happened, and that America has an investment in preventing people from knowing the truth. This assessment, of course, is at odds with the notion that we can never really know what happened (a concept put forward by all of the writers I have included in this thesis). This dialectic performs a kind of estrangement as the thesis progresses to offer readers a more conventional experience of how one would critique historical narratives at the beginning and then a more complex one later.

20 Mircea Eliade, "Magic and Prestige of 'Origins'," in Myth and Reality, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper & Row, 1975 [1963]), 21.

21 American conservative writers continue to associate the United States with the biblical “city upon a hill” from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, where in Matthew 5:14, Jesus tells his followers, “You are the light of

the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” Harold Koh, "America's Jekyll-and-Hyde Exceptionalism", in Michael Ignatieff, ed., American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, 112.

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The initially presented framework —myth distorts history, or some ways of telling history distort history —is at odds with the overarching mysticism/apophaticism framework from which this thesis is written. The arguments that I present in the first half of this thesis claim that we can critique certain tellings of history, not because of their formal features (they present themselves as full and complete knowledge) but, rather, because of their content (they fail to disclose what “really happened”). The earlier line of thinking is not within the bounds of the apophatic, but is simply critiquing what certain histories relate. The final chapters, however, attempt to examine what apophatic narratives look like through the films of Alain Resnais, which in many ways exemplify Benjamin’s meditations on history. The apophatic historian would never deny that something happened —any more than the mystic would deny that the Divine exists, or the trauma survivor would deny that an injury has occurred —but rather that the event, the entity, the experience that we are trying to relate, express, capture in language always exceeds, resists, and shows the folly of our efforts. Apophaticism, then, is a lesson in profound humility, in sharp contrast to the hubris of mastering the past —either as victors or as healers.

There is one additional framework within this thesis that is closely connected to the first two: knowledge versus experience. In the final chapters, I present Bataille’s critique of knowledge as a problematic form of mastery. Additionally, I offer an example

from Hiroshima mon amour that shows how certain tellings destroy the experience by giving a final meaning by, in Barthes’ language, predicating the sentence. Here, there is still an event (an experience), but this experience cannot be fully known, and the desire to

fully know it is an act of violence, even when it imagines itself as an act of healing, fully know it is an act of violence, even when it imagines itself as an act of healing,

compassion, memory, justice, etc. Again, my arguments in the introduction and first two chapters implicitly trade on a kind of “knowing” relationship to Hiroshima and a call to the reader to know and remember in a way that I critique as the thesis unfolds. As the thesis closes, I argue that what really needs to happen, what our ethical response should

be , is that we must find a way to experience the historical event —not as it was experienced by its participants, but in an affectively analogous manner —rather than striving to know or understand it.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES xix CHAPTER 1: SELLING HIROSHIMA TO AMERICA

1 The Story Begins

1 Metaphors of Clouds and the Sun

8 Hersey’s “Hiroshima”

11 Bataille on “Hiroshima”

18 CHAPTER 2: MYTH VERSUS HISTORY

25 Creation Myths and the Power of Naming

26 Origin is the Goal (End)

29 The Role of the Historian

32 CHAPTER 3: NIGHT AND FOG AND HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR

48 Night and Fog 48 Hiroshima mon amour 57

Benjamin’s and Bataille’s Ethics

69 Images of Healing and Closure

87 CHAPTER 4: A PRACTICE OF SEEING

A Warning against Complacency

94 Looking without Judging

94 Suffering without Meaning

95 Going Forward

104 BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 1: Mushroom cloud, somewhere over Japan, 1945 v FIGURE 2: Dr. Seuss’ anti-Japanese propaganda cartoon

13 FIGURE 3: The New Yorker ’s “Hiroshima” spread

16 FIGURE 4: The myth of the French soldier

40 FIGURE 5: Young survivor being measured by a kindly nurse

43 FIGURE 6: The myth of the French police

55 FIGURE 7: Ashes and sweat

58 FIGURE 8: Elle lovingly stroking Lui's hand

77 FIGURE 9: Young survivor being consoled by a kindly nurse

80 FIGURE 10: One single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble . . .

CHAPTER 1: SELLING HIROSHIMA TO AMERICA The Story Begins

There are many beginnings to many stories told about Hiroshima, as there are with all histories. 22 We could begin with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on

December 7, 1941, an act of aggression that provoked America into finally entering World War II. 23 Or we could begin in Hawaii more than a hundred years earlier when

New England missionaries earnestly tried to spread their faith to the natives at the same time economic interest was growing for their sugar cane. 24

I choose to begin this story with Truman’s radio broadcast, which informed the world about the first nuclear war.

On August 6, 1945, sixteen hours after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, President Truman officially proclaimed the event. From the earliest announcement, with one exception, the official narrative of the bombing has been deliberately mystified. This

22 Chimamanda Adachie speaks about the dangers of the single story in her 2009 TEDTalk. She explains,

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, “secondly.” Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.

Chimamanda Adichie, July 22, 2009. "The Danger of a Single Story," TEDGlobal 2009. TEDTalk Video, http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html (accessed January 18, 2013).

23 24 This is also the date of Hitler’s infamous Night and Fog Decree which is discussed later in this thesis.

The missionaries became powerful sugar planters and politicians.; On Jan. 16, 1893, U.S. Marines landed in Honolulu without presidential authorization to assist a group of eighteen men (mostly American sugar farmers) to stage a coup and proclaim themselves the “provisional government” of Hawaii: “Supported by John Stevens, the U.S. Minister to Hawaii, and a contingent of Marines from the warship U.S.S. Boston, the Committee on Annexation overthrew Queen Lili'uokalani in a bloodless coup on January 17, 1893 and established a revolutionary regime.” Teri Sforza, "Hawaii's annexation a story of betrayal," The Orange County Register , November 9, 1996, http://www.hawaii-nation.org/betrayal.html (accessed March 21, 2013).; "Teaching With Documents: The 1897 Petition Against the Annexation of Hawaii ", National Archives. http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/hawaii-petition/ (accessed March 21, 2013).

one exception reveals the President pointedly acknowledging the bombing as an act of vengeance rather than an honorable act to bring the war to a timely end: “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. 25 ”

Truman connected military battles with scientific progress: “The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles. ” He also tied progress to our immense monetary investment: “We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history —and won.” The atomic bomb, as “the greatest achievement of organized science in history, ” was to be a source of great pride for the American people. Truman explains: “The fact that we can release atomic energy ushers in a new era in man ’s understanding of nature’s forces.” Americans marshaled the world

into the Nuclear Age. 26

Truman, however, failed to inform his audience of the atomic bomb’s radiation and its adverse effects. Both at home and in Japan, American authorities tightly controlled the publication of images and news stories relating to the atomic bombings. U.S. military authorities banned and confiscated all photographs and film footage taken at Hiroshima that represented anything other than architectural damage (particularly any documentation of injured people). Wilfred Burchett was the first journalist to visit Hiroshima after the

25 Harry S. Truman, "Statement by the President, August 6, 1945." http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/pdfs/59.pdf (accessed

March 10, 2013).

26 As Paul Boyer begins his chapter “Atomic Weapons and Judeo-Christian Ethics,” “The atomic age was opened with prayer.” Following a chaplain’s invocation of divine blessing on the crew of the Enola Gay,

President Truman added: “We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.” Paul S. Boyer, "Atomic Weapons and Judeo- Christian Ethics: The Discourse Begins," in By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 211.

atom bomb was dropped. His Morse code dispatch, which was printed in London’s Daily Express newspaper on September 5, 1945 under the title “The Atomic Plague,” was the first public report to mention the effects of radiation and nuclear fallout. U.S. censors suppressed a supporting story submitted by George Weller of the Chicago Daily News and accused Burchett of being influenced by Japanese propaganda. During the U.S. occupation of Japan, and under General MacArthur’s orders, Burchett was barred from

entering Japan. 27 General Leslie R. Groves, military head of the wartime atomic bomb project, worked diligently to quickly contain and rebuke any fallout from press attention given to lingering radiation effects. Fearing that reports would create public sympathy for the Japanese, Groves testified before a Senate committee in November 1945 claiming, “[A]s

I understand it from the doctors, it is a very pleasant way to die. 28 ”

Groves was part of an evolving campaign by American officials to downplay or deny the fatal and persistent radiation effects inflicted by nuclear weapons. Hiroshima survivors were not the priority; managing public opinion was. Government officials feared that if the truth about radiation effects came to light, the atomic bomb might be categorized with already banned inhumane forms of warfare, such as chemical and biological weapons. Such a finding would limit America ’s ability to further test the

27 Amy and David Goodman, "The Hiroshima Cover-Up," The Baltimore Sun, 5 August 2005, http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0805-20.htm (accessed March 10, 2013).

28 Sean L. Malloy, "'A Very Pleasant Way to Die': Radiation Effects and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb against Japan," Diplomatic History 36, no. 3 (2012): 517-518.

weapon as well as lead to criticism of those who had designed, built, and authorized the use of the atomic bomb against Japan in the first place. 29

Throughout the year following the bombings, American journalists under the guiding hand of censors increasingly portrayed Hiroshima and Nagasaki as “symbols of

the birth of a new Japan dedicated to rehabilitation, peace, progress, and reconciliation.” 30 The underlying message was that Japanese society was progressing steadily under

America’s cultivating touch, moving towards a new pacifist outlook that ensured a peaceful future. 31

29 Ibid., 518. ; The bomb was designed specifically to defeat Hitler, but with Germany’s surrender on May 7 th and the threat of further Soviet expansion, the decision was made to drop the bomb on Japan in a grand

theatrical display in order to deter Russia. Steven Poole, in his book Unspeak, writes: Remember that people killed by terrorism are not the people the perpetrators wish to persuade. They are exemplars, bargaining chips. There is a disconnect between victims and audience; the violence is a warning to people other than those targeted. (The writer Brian Jenkins has summed up this fact in the catchphrase ‘terrorism is theatre’: a US Army lieutenant colonel went one better, telling a reporter in Baghdad in 2003: ‘terrorism is grand theater.’) Unfortunately this, too, is true of many government actions. Consider the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945...the bombings were designed as an awful demonstration: to instill such fear in the Japanese government that they would surrender. The bomb spoke thus: Give up or there'll be more where this came from. It also sent a powerful message to a secondary audience: Joseph Stalin. On this measure, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are, by many orders of magnitude, the greatest acts of terrorism in history.

Steven Poole, Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality (New York: Grove Press, 2006), 130.

30 Michael J. Yavenditti, "John Hersey and the American Conscience: The Reception of 'Hiroshima'," Pacific Historical Review

43, no. 1 (1974): 31.

31 Japan’s “peaceful future” was instilled through U.S. mandates forcing all military forces to disband. Japan’s postwar Constitution, whose writing was directed by General Douglas MacArthur states:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Article 9, The Constitution of Japan (1947). “Carthaginian Peace” comes to mind. The term derives from peace imposed on Carthage by Rome. After the Second Punic War, Carthage lost all of its colonies, was forced to demilitarize, pay a constant tribute to Rome, and could not enter war without Rome’s permission. In turn, Emperor Hirohito was forced to surrender unconditionally, Japan's military was disbanded, Hiroshima was rebuilt into a capitalist economy, and Japan is not allowed to enter war without permission from U.S. authorities.; Mary: Oh, Charles, I can’t imagine you’re advocating a … Carthaginian peace. Charles: Well, as an historian, I must remind you that the world hasn’t had much trouble From Carthage in the past … 2,000 years. (Film dialogue from The Stranger, released in 1946 and directed by Orson Welles.)

With the bombing of Hiroshima, an act which seemingly ended World War II, America proclaimed itself the leader of the free world. The atomic bomb invested the U.S. with God-like power to take life in the blink of eye. 32 America now holds the power

to wipe all life from the face of the earth; this power is the ultimate deterrent. For Truman, the victory in World War II demonstrated American greatness and also invested the United States with the responsibility of ensuring peace and freedom in the postwar

world. 33 America is the “the greatest nation the sun has ever shone upon.” 34 America is the peacemaker and protector of the world. The irrationality of “peace through strength,”

a concept that implies that strength of arms is a necessary component of peace, permeates

32 Upon detonation of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity Test site on July 16, 1945, Robert Oppenheimer, the supervising scientist of The Manhattan Project proclaimed “…now I am become Death [Shiva], the 33 destroyer of worlds...”.

Two months after the atomic bombings, Truman stated:

This great development has proven conclusively that a free people can do anything that is necessary for the welfare of the human race as a whole. We created the greatest production machine [developing atomic energy] in the history of the world. We made that machine operate, to the disaster of the dictators. Now then, we want to keep that machine operating. We must keep that machine operating. We have just discovered the source of the sun's power —atomic energy; that is, we have found out how to turn it loose. We had to turn it loose in the beginning for destruction. We are not going to use it for destruction any more, I hope. But that tremendous source of energy can create for us the greatest age in the history of the world if we are sensible enough to put it to that use and to no other. I think we are going to do just that. I think our Allies are going to cooperate with us in peace, just as we cooperated with them in war. . . The greatest age in history is upon us. We must assume that responsibility. We are going to assume it, and every one of you, and all of us, are going to get in and work for the welfare of the world in peace, just as we worked for the welfare of the world in war. That is absolutely essential and necessary. . . [M]ake this country what it ought to be —the greatest nation the sun has ever shone upon.

Harry S. Truman, Address and Remarks at the Dedication of the Kentucky Dam at Gilbertsville, Kentucky October 10, 1945. https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=174&st=&st1= (accessed March 22, 2013). Emphasis added. It is worth noting that Japan is known as “The Land of the Rising Sun.” The characters that make up Japan’s name mean “sun-origin” and its former military flag is the Rising Sun Flag. Japan’s current flag symbolizes the sun with no emanating rays. 34

Also known as American exceptionalism.

American society even today. 35 Herbert Marcuse, in the introductory paragraphs of One- Dimensional Man , writes:

Does not the threat of an atomic catastrophe which could wipe out the human race also serve to protect the very forces which perpetuate this danger? The efforts to prevent such a catastrophe overshadow the search for its potential causes in contemporary industrial society. These causes remain unidentified, unexposed, unattacked by the public because they recede before the all too obvious threat from without —to the West from the East, to the East from the West. Equally obvious is the need for being prepared, for living on the brink, for facing the challenge. We submit to the peaceful production of the means of destruction, to the perfection of waste, to being educated for a defense which deforms the defenders and that which they defend.

If we attempt to relate the causes of the danger to the war in which society is organized and organizes its members, we are immediately confronted with the fact that advanced industrial society becomes richer, bigger, and better as it perpetuates the danger. The defense structure makes life easier for a greater number of people and extends man’s mastery of nature. Under these circumstances, our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason.

And yet this society is irrational as a whole. Its productivity is destructive of the free development of human needs and faculties, its peace maintained by the

constant threat of war. . . 36 Present-day American society’s prosperity and progress are tied directly to the military

industrial complex, with nuclear weapons actualizing the high-end expense of the arsenal. At the height of nuclear arms stockpiling in 1966, the United States held over 32,000

35 The slogan, “Peace Through Strength,” appeared in the Republican Party platforms of 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012. In a recent article about the Republican Party’s search for a way back

to presidential success, the Associated Press quoted Senator Lindsey Graham who stated, “I think it's going to be difficult to lead the Republican Party without embracing peace through strength, the Ronald Reagan approach to national security.” Charles Babington, "GOP ponders long list of names, policies, for 2016," The Miami Herald , March 27, 2013, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/27/3309461/gop-ponders-long- list-of-names.html.

36 Herbert Marcuse, "The Paralysis of Criticism: Society without Opposition," in One Dimensional Man (London: Sphere Books, 1968). http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/one-

dimensional-man/introduction.htm (accessed March 20, 2013). Emphasis added.

nuclear warheads and bombs. 37 In 2010, President Obama signed the nuclear arms reduction treaty, New START (for Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), yet according to

the U.S. Department of Defense, the Obama administration’s best official estimate still puts nuclear weapons spending at $214 billion over the next ten years. 38 Additionally,

Mother Jones reported last year that more than $18 million has been invested in the election campaigns of lawmakers that oversee nuclear weapons spending. Private companies that produce the main components of the nuclear arsenal “employ more than

95 former members of Congress or Capitol Hill staff to lobby for government funding. 39 ” William Hartung, who directs the Center for International Policy’s Arms and Security

Project stated that “any effort to downsize the nation’s nuclear force is likely to be met with fierce opposition from the individuals and institutions that benefit from the nuclear status quo, including corporations involved in designing and building nuclear delivery vehicles; companies that operate nuclear warhead-related facilities; and members of

Congress with nuclear weapons-related facilities or deployments. 40 ” Very recently, in an interview with Israeli TV, President Obama stated that he

believes Iran is “over a year or so” away from being able to develop a nuclear weapon and that the U.S. will use “all options” to stop it. 41 Although the President signed a

nuclear arms reduction treaty less than two years ago, his statements foreclose any

37 "50 Facts About U.S. Nuclear Weapons," http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/50 (accessed March 20, 2013).

38 Russell Rumbaugh and Nathan Cohn, "Resolving the Ambiguity of Nuclear Weapons Costs " Arms Control Association (June 2012).

http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2012_06/Resolving_the_Ambiguity_of_Nuclear_Weapons_Costs (accessed March 20, 2013).

39 R. Jeffrey Smith, "The Nuclear Weapons Industry's Money Bombs," Mother Jones (June 2012). http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/nuclear-bombs-congress-elections-campaign-donations.