From Wayne State

This essay examines John Hersey’s 1946 report, Hiroshima, as a piece of cultural production that aimed to resist and rearrange the hegemonic narrative surrounding the first-ever use of atomic weapons by the United States—that narrative being that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was warranted and righteous. I argue that the decisions made regarding the reportage, publication, and circulation of Hiroshima aimed to set the record straight regarding the impact of the atomic bombings. In this way, Hiroshima participated in rewriting history even as the metaphorical dust from the nuclear fallout was still in the process of settling (or being sifted) into a coherent narrative by powerful voices in US government and media.

Hersey’s text performed an antiwar function by acting in direct opposition to the US government’s policy of censorship, instead exposing to its citizens (and the broader global public) the breathtakingly destructive impact of the atomic bomb on citizens of Hiroshima. Furthermore, as a work of journalism that employed distinctly literary techniques for aesthetic effect, Hiroshima complemented its informational, antiwar censorship function by concurrently offering an antiwar aesthetic experience designed to dismantle key elements of US pro-war propaganda.