ABSTRACT

Japan's strongly felt national identity as the first and only country to have undergone atomic bombing gives a unique stamp to its perspective on the A-bomb. 1 It is hardly surprising that the way the Japanese have seen the American decision to use the bomb has been markedly different from that of the Americans. What deserves to be noted, however, is that in some respects the gaps of collective memory have, if anything, widened over the half century since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Japan the A-bomb question is dominated by emotion and, more often than not, surrounded by historical myths and moralism. 2 In the United States until recently the exigencies of the Cold War and imperatives of the “national security state” have defined perceptions of the A-bomb decision in narrowly strategic terms, often clouding the broader significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in human history. The psychological and cognitive dissonance over the question has been such that it has constituted a serious irritant in relations between the two peoples, as well as in their official dealings. 3