Keynote Address

Michael Broderick
Associate Professor of Media Analysis, Murdoch University, Australia
Deputy Director of Australia's National Academy of Screen & Sound


Mick Broderick has investigated the ways the nuclear age has impacted representation in modern and contemporary culture, media, and history since the late 1980s, when his reference work Nuclear Movies (1988) appeared. His edited volume Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film (1996) was followed by two major collections on international trauma culture and collective suffering, co-edited with Antonio Traverso: Trauma, Media, Art: New Perspectives (2010) and Interrogating Trauma: Collective Suffering in Global Art and Media (2011).

In two of his most recent projects, Mick Broderick returns to documenting hibakusha experience and preserving living testimony in the contexts of the Allied Occupation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and radiation-affected communities worldwide. In the “Global Hibakusha” project (2010-12, 2012-14), for example, Mick Broderick and long-term collaborator A/Prof. Robert Jacobs, Hiroshima Peace Institute, analyze the socio-cultural effects radiation exposure has on communities affected by nuclear warfare or testing, and by accidents at nuclear weapon production sites or at nuclear power plants.
Hibakusha Traces:
Digital Remembrance amid the Traumascapes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
 
Abstract: Following the 70th anniversary commemorations of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this talk will consider the challenges and opportunities of remembering, preserving and communicating those events to contemporary and future audiences. In particular, this talk addresses the possibilities of a third generation cohort of hibakusha, using ubiquitous digital devices (such smart phones and tablets), to record family testimony and other modes of cultural expression relating to the nuclear attacks, and their ongoing legacy. With reference to the works of Lisa Yonemaya (Hiroshima Traces), Akira Lippert (Atomic Light), Maria Turmarkin (Traumascapes) and Margaret Duras/Alain Resnais (Hiroshima mon Amour) the talk outlines a range of recent applied research strategies and digital arts activities, including engagement with intergenerational communities of global hibakusha, and revealing the neglected histories of POWs and Occupation troops in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during and after the bombings.

Lunch Plenaries
 
Lonny Carlile
Director, Center for Japanese Studies
University of Hawai’i at Manoa


Mainstreaming Japan’s Periphery: Hokkaido and Okinawa as Pedagogical Devices
 
Abstract:  From the vantage point of most American educators Japan’s northernmost “main” island of Hokkaido and its southernmost prefecture of Okinawa would appear to be exotic places whose history and contemporary status are of little relevance to their curricular concerns. However, when placed in the appropriate analytical frame Hokkaido and Okinawa constitute excellent case studies that illustrate a number of universal and fundamental features of the modern and post-modern world. Using experiences and insights gained from several years of teaching a course focused on these two areas the talk will discuss how universal themes relating to the nature of modern states and nations and the contemporary status and life situations of periphery, minority and indigenous populations can be brought to life through the experiences of the populations of these two areas of Japan.

Chad R. Deihl
Assistant Professor, History
Loyola University Maryland

 
Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction, History and Atomic Memory
 
Abstract: In the first decades after the atomic bombings of 1945, the municipal governments of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took vastly different approaches to reconstruction and commemoration. By the late 1950s, Hiroshima was the center of the peace and anti-nuclear weapons movements, but Nagasaki, it seemed, failed to preserve its identity as an atomic-bombed city when it erased the last vestige of the bombing, the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral near ground zero. In April 1958, the mayor approved a bid from the Catholic community to remove the ruins of the cathedral, which had served as the center of commemoration in Nagasaki, and build a new one. This shocked city residents, especially those who had survived the bombing and who felt helpless in the face of the apathy of politicians to the traumatic memories of the city. Meanwhile, scholars from around the world looked to Hiroshima to learn about the atomic experience.
     This paper focuses on the history of postwar reconstruction in Nagasaki to understand the origins of a popular memory of the bombings that has largely ignored the experience of that city. Hiroshima has stood as the representative of both bombings for seven decades, but looking exclusively at Hiroshima tells only half the story. Viewing the history of Nagasaki's reconstruction on its own terms challenges the dominance of "Hiroshima" in the history and memory of the bombings and their aftermath, while also illuminating the formation of historical memory more generally.