‘When the bomb leaves the bay’

 

Captured in one of the most famous photographs in history, the mushroom cloud forming over Nagasaki in the early morning of 9 August 1945 automatically comes to the minds of many upon a mention of nuclear weapons. The Allied forces had a strong vested interest in keeping the thoughts of their populace away from what was happening under the iconic pyro-cumulous veil. As feared as these weapons were intended to be, they were promoted as fundamentally ethical inventions, foreordained to be perceived as the ‘necessary evil’ bringing upon the ultimate end of World War II.

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Constraining Japan after its surrender, the US forces worked tirelessly to suppress visuals of the aftermath of the use of nuclear weapons, even at the cost of further civilian suffering. Proclaiming or even implying that the Japanese civilians killed and mutilated by nuclear weapons were humans constituted, as the American veterans protesting against the Smithsonian exhibition on the topic put it, an ‘insult' of them and an ‘undeserved apology’ to the victims. As the exhibitions’ curator saw it, 'the story was predetermined to ‘stop when the bomb leaves the bomb bay.' The Western citizenry was given little incentive to think of the Japanese as anything but some obscure, blood-lusting creatures, at the first opportunity wishing to take the ‘[up to] one million American lives' nuclear weapons supposedly saved.

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Notwithstanding the political credit the US government has held, it internally maintained deep awareness that the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fundamentally offend the human conscience. Despite every effort to the contrary, the Atomic Archive now holds an enormous, publicly accessible stock of testimonials, visual media and medical documents. These chronicles contain the most harrowing images that the human mind can conceptualise, shared at the unimaginable personal expense of the hibakusha  with the hope to help bring about peace. They recount bearing witness to ‘ghost’-like humans, ‘turned into charcoal'  wandering ‘aimlessly through the remains of the city' in what one survivor described as a ‘monochromatic, soundless hell.' Tens of thousands were killed instantly or within minutes of the detonations, as the Nagasaki river became ‘red with blood.' Many survivors still vividly recall scenes that are traumatising even in imagination, such as a ‘bewildered woman [carrying] a bucket holding the severed head of her young daughter’ in Nagasaki,' or the ant-walking ‘alligator people’ of Hiroshima, ‘now eyeless and faceless […] did not scream […] could not form the sounds. The noise they made was worse than screaming.'

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