Good Condition
The two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the end of a global war, but for the tens of thousands of survivors it was the beginning of a new life marked with the stigma of being hibakusha (atomic bomb-affected people). Susan Southard has spent a decade interviewing and researching the lives of the hibakusha and their raw, emotive eye-witness accounts. Their testimonies reconstruct the days, months and years after the bombing, the isolation of their hospitalisation and recovery, the difficulty of re-entering daily life and the enduring impact of life as the only people in history who have lived through a nuclear attack and its aftermath. Following five teenage survivors from 1945 to the present day, Southard unveils the lives they have led, their injuries in the annihilation of the bomb, the dozens of radiation-related cancers and illnesses they have suffered and the humiliating and frightening choices about marriage they were forced into as a result of their fears of the genetic diseases that may be passed through their families for generations to come. The power of Nagasaki lies in the detail of the survivor's stories, as deaths continued for decades because of the radiation contamination, which caused various forms of cancer. Intimate and compassionate, while being grounded in historical research, Nagasaki reveals the censorship that kept the suffering endured by the hibakusha hidden around the world. For years after the bombings news reports and scientific research were censored by U.S. occupation forces and the U.S. government led an efficient campaign to justify the necessity and morality of dropping the bombs.
Publication Data:
Author(s): Susan Southard
Publisher: Souvenir Press Limited
Pages: 389
Language: en
Category: History
Genre: History, Asia, Japan, Military, Nuclear Warfare, Wars & Conflicts, World War II, Modern, 20th Century, Technology & Engineering, Military Science
ISBN: 0285643274
Kisharon Langdon
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