ABSTRACT
Almost eight decades after the end of the Asia-Pacific War, Japanese war memory in general still lacks the recognition of the history of Imperial Japan’s seven decades of colonial rule and aggressive wars and focuses on Japanese suffering in the war, particularly the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This chapter discusses this tendency which is prevalent even in the “peace” and “anti-nuclear” communities in Japan, accentuated by the “Hiroshima-centred Historical View,” and “a-bomb nationalism” signified by the frequently used expression of Japan as the “only a-bombed nation.” The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is a notable institution that represents such a historical view. For example, it fails to present Korean Hibakusha in the historical context of Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and merely depicts them as part of the “Foreign Hibakusha.” It also fails to point to the United States’ responsibility for the evil that it committed. The author argues that such sanitization of historical responsibilities contributes to today’s acceptance of the United States–Japan military alliance that enables further military buildup in the region, constituting a permanent “war capital” identity of Hiroshima. The chapter concludes by presenting a vision for an alternative peace narrative in Hiroshima and beyond.
