READING LIST BY THEME

Basic Texts

Testimony

  • Susan Southard, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War (NY: Penguin Books, 2016)

African-Americans and the Bomb

  • Vincent J. Intondi, African Americans Against the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Colonialism, and The Black Freedom Movement (Stanford; CA: Stanford University Press, 2015)

  • Abby J. Kinchy, “African Americans in the Atomic Age: Postwar Perspectives on Race and the Bomb, 1945-1967” Technology and Culture 50 (2) 2009: 291-315

Japanese-Americans and the Bomb

  • Rinjiro Sodei, Were We the Enemy? American Survivors of Hiroshima (NY: Routledge, 2000)

Gender and Hiroshima Maidens

  • David Serlin, “The Clean Room/Domesticating the Hiroshima Maidens” Cabinet 11 (2003) 

  • Robert (Bo) Jacobs, “Reconstructing the Perpetrator’s Soul by Reconstructin the Victim’s Body: The Portrayal of the ‘Hiroshima Maidens’ by the Mainstream Media in the United States” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific  24 (2010)

  • Yuki Miyamoto, “Gendered Bodies in Tokusatsu: Monsters and Aliens as the Atomic Bomb Victims” The Journal of Popular Culture Vol.49-5 (2016) *Tokusatus is Japanese special effect movies and TV series that feature superheroes and monsters. ex. Godzilla, Ultraman, Kamen Rider, etc.

  • The Radium Girls (Naperville: Sourcebooks, 2017)

Downwinders and Experiments

  • Terry Tempest Williams, “Epilogue: The Clan of One-Breasted Women” from Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (New York: Vintage Books, 1992) *This epilogue is about Mormon women who suffered from fallout of nuclear tests.

  • Sarah Alisabeth Fox, Downwind: A People’s History of the Nuclear West (Lincoln; NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2018)

  • Traci Brynne Voyles, Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country (Minneapolis; MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015)

  • Lisa Martino-Taylor, Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans (New York: Routledge, 2018)

  • Jayita Sarkar and Caitlin Meyer, “Radiation illnesses and COVID-19 in the Navajo Nation” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Feb 3, 2021. (available at https://thebulletin.org/2021/02/radiation-illnesses-and-covid-19-in-the-navajo-nation/)

Nuclear Facility Sites

  • Kristen Iversen, Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats (New York: Crown, 2012)

  • Trisha T. Pritikin, The Hanford Plaintiffs: voices from the Fight for Atomic Justice (Lawrence; KA: University Press of Kansas, 2020) *The record of Hanford downwinders’ lawsuit and 25 downwinders’ testimonies.

Radiation Cover-up

  • James L. Nolan, Jr., Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Cambridge; MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020)

  • Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020)

Post-War Hiroshima Literature

  • Kenzaburo Oe, Hiroshima Notes (New York: Grove Press, 1997) *non-fiction

  • Masuji Ibuse, Black Rain (NY: Kodansha International, 2012) *semi-fictive narrative

Memory/Commemoration

  • Laura E. Hein and Mark Selden eds. Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age  (NY: Routledge, 1996) *including a chapter on Japanese-American hibakusha, Korean hibakusha, 1995’s Smithsonian debate (PDFs are available in our file: Ch 1--editors’ introduction to the atom bomb discourse (File name HeinSeldan) ; Ch 3--The Smithonian Debate in 1995 (Yui) ; Ch 10--Korean residents in Japan; discrimination against them; and their memorialization of the bombing (Yoneyama); Ch 11--Japanese-Americans’ experiences of the bombing (Sodei).

Graphic Novels

  • Keiji Nakazawa, Barefoot Gen, esp. vols. 1-2 (out of 10) *Vol. 1 is pre-bomb life in Japan: brutal violence was prevalent under the fascist regime. Vol. 2 is immediately after the bombing. The protagonist, Gen (hard G) is an alter ego of the author Nakazawa. The Japanese war culture and the atomic bombing (including the description of how Japanese treated Korean residents) are depicted from 10-year-old boy.

  • Fumiyo Kono, Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms *Out of Print. Trilogy—the first part is a young woman who died prematurely (popular trope which can be called into question); the second part is her niece whose hibakusha mother had passed away; a life of the second generation; the third part is the niece found a connection with her late mother and niece, facing her own identity of the second generation of hibakusha.