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      Protesters in Hiroshima.

      Why One 3rd Generation Hiroshima Survivor Won’t Watch Oppenheimer

      Yet again in the film we see the erasure of the hibakusha and their experiences, the supremacy of war and national power over the people harmed by that supremacy.

      Yukiyo Kawano
      Aug 20, 2023

      As we approached August 6 this year, the 78th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, my mind kept going back to the basement of Chugoku Electric Power Company, 800 meters (half a mile) from the hypocenter, where my grandfather was that day. I witness how the force of the nuclear bomb can destroy the human body, how the vacuum of a nuclear explosion can gouge out a child’s eyeballs, how the atomic burns peel the skin, swell and corrode the face in ways humanity had never seen. According to one review, the filmmaker focuses on the face of Oppenheimer rather than showing the carnage of his bomb.

      From a few minutes of an interview with the filmmaker, I can see that spectators of his movie will safely assume that the characters have all the possible means to escape to minimize their exposure to radiation. Such a space was never offered to people at ground level in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on those critical days. The mushroom-shaped cloud created by the explosion was depicted over and over again in the trailer for the film. But this is a symbol of ashes to the people of my community. That cloud contained the flesh and bones of our grandparents.

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      nuclear weapons
      A black-and-white photo of J. Robert Oppenheimer smoking a pipe.

      For Oppenheimer, a World Government Was the Only Way to Save Us From Ourselves

      Might something like a genuine world republic provide humanity with the tools to get a grip on existential perils like the climate emergency, runaway artificial intelligence, and new weapons of mass extermination?

      Jane Shevtsov
      Tad Daley
      Aug 14, 2023

      Blink and you’ll miss it.

      In a scene in the new Oppenheimer film set right after the successful 1949 atomic bomb test by the USSR, there is a brief exchange between the film’s two main antagonists. Lewis Strauss, chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, asks J. Robert Oppenheimer what he thinks should be done now. “International control,” Oppenheimer immediately replies.

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      j. robert oppenheimer
      Joseph Rotblat with his hands raised sitting in front of books.

      The Scientist Who Walked Away From the Manhattan Project

      While the name Sir Joseph Rotblat will probably never be as widely known as that of the other illustrious scientists who worked on the project that ushered in the nuclear age, his example serves as a reminder that we always have a choice.

      Gerard Boyce
      Aug 08, 2023

      Last month saw the release of the highly anticipated blockbuster movie Oppenheimer. Based on a biography of the head of the Manhattan Project, the U.S.’s secret World War II program to develop the atomic bomb, this movie has received positive reviews from critics. Cillian Murphy, the actor who plays the main character in the eponymously titled movie, in particular has been praised for his performance and the stellar job he does in capturing the pathos that haunted the title character after the bomb had been successfully detonated.

      Although no doubt deserving of the acclaim he has garnered for his role, enshrouding his character in tragedy and investing the film with melodrama carries the risk of conveying the message that we in our collective humanity are victims who are somehow helpless in the face of this powerful technology.

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