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Entangled Memories: Israel, Japan and the Emergence of Global Memory Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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In 1973, just months before the Yom Kippur War, Muki Tzur, an Israeli historian, wrote in the introduction of the German translation of “Siach Lokhamim” (A Warriors' Conversation), “[this book] was written by Jewish youths of the 20th century. This century was shaped by two colossal events, two earthquakes in modern civilization: Hiroshima and Auschwitz. It seems that there is no young man in this world who is free from relating to these two events…we (young Israelis) are looking for meaning between these two extremities.” Haim Guri, one of Israel's leading essayists, took offense at Tzur's equating of the two tragedies. In a biting critique titled Al ha-hevdel (About the difference), Guri dismissed any effort of comparison or connection between Hiroshima and Auschwitz. Guri presented Hiroshima as a tragedy but one that was conducted as part of a war in which the Japanese were the aggressors, while the Jews were not in any way conducting warfare against the Germans. Furthermore, accepting official American interpretation of the events, Guri presented Hiroshima as an “evil with a purpose,” which was the lesser evil by preventing many more casualties, both Japanese and American, in the event of an invasion. Auschwitz was different. “It had no purpose…it was a crime.” Implicitly (and a-historically) condemning the allies, Guri added, “If the A-bomb was dropped on Auschwitz millions would have been saved.” Guri hinted at what was really at stake when he concluded, “the Germans would be pleased with this false confluence of Hiroshima and Auschwitz,” thus implying that the very comparison served to undermine German guilt. In a forceful reply, Tzur responded to Guri, “I cannot forget Hiroshima… not because I could identify with its victims to the same degree I could with my own people. Not, also, because I attribute to Truman and his advisers the same motives I attribute to Eichmann or Heidrich. But because Hiroshima has put us under the threat of a total weapon…we must understand the horrible absurdity [which is Hiroshima]; even I as an Israeli cannot release myself from that shadow.”
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I would like to thank Miriam Intrator for reading a draft of this paper, as well as Mark Selden and other readers at the Journal for their insightful remarks and help with improving the paper.
1 Davar, 29 January 1973. The book was translated into English as The Seventh Day. It was a popular post 1967 retelling of dialogues among war veterans, mostly of the left wing Kibbutz movement, debating the morality of the Six-Day War and the experience of combat. Recently a number of unpublished tapes of these conversations turned up where the soldiers also spoke on alleged war crimes and atrocities they witnessed, including the killing of POWs and civilians. These revelations were censored from the original book. See here, accessed August 7, 2015.
2 Ibid.
3 Davar, 25 July 1973. Tzur was no pacifist. He was rather critical of a group of Jewish-American students who told him that the “Jewish people chose justice over the politics of force.” Tzur argued that, in the face of destruction (as in 1930's Europe or the present Middle East), “not to be strong is immoral.”
4 Sebastian/' Conrad, “Entangled Memories: Versions of the Past in Germany and Japan, 1945-2001,”Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 38, No. 1, Redesigning the Past (Jan., 2003), p. 86.
5 Ibid.
6 Ran Zwigenberg, Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
7 Because of limitations of space I will focus only on Hiroshima and will only mention Nagasaki briefly. Hiroshima's status was much more prominent both nationally and internationally. Nevertheless, although there are many parallels between the cities, Hiroshima should not stand for Nagasaki. For more on Nagasaki see Chad Diehl, “Envisioning Nagasaki: from ‘Atomic Wasteland’ to ‘International Cultural City’, 1945-1950,” Urban History, Vol. 41, no. 3 (August 2014), pp. 497-516.
8 The fact that many Japanese were indeed victims of firebombing arguably contributed to the wide sense of identification with Hiroshima as a national tragedy. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima overshadowed the bombing of Nagasaki and, also, the firebombing that destroyed 64 Japanese cities. Yet perhaps that wide experience of bombing throughout Japan facilitated the emergence of Hiroshima as a national symbol of victimhood. Significantly, when Hiroshima first applied for reconstruction funds it was told by the Japanese government to “wait its turn” like all other war ravaged cities across Japan. See Zwigenberg, p. 46.
9 John W. Dower uses tragic narratives. I chose to focus on the positive side of these same narratives. “Triumphal and Tragic Narratives of the War in Asia,” The Journal of American History 82, no. 3 (December 1, 1995): pp. 1124-1135.
10 To the best of my knowledge, no comparable moral revulsion was prompted by the annihilation of Japanese civilians by firebombing which took a larger toll in lives than the two atomic bombings. The firebombing of Germany, however, did provoke some strong responses in both the UK and the US. See A. C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities: is the Targeting of Civilians in War ever Justified? (London: Bloomsbury. 2007), pp. 156, 174-177.
11 Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1985). p. 232.
12 Ibid., p. 235.
13 Quoted at John Treat, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (University Of Chicago Press, 1996), p.27.
14 Adorno famously wrote, “Even the most extreme consciousness of doom threatens to degenerate into idle chatter. Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. See Theodor W. Adorno, Prisms, (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1967) p. 34.
15 See Pieter Lagrou, “The Politics of Memory: Resistance as a Collective Myth in Post-war France, Belgium and the Netherlands, 1945-1965,” European Review 11, no. 04 (2003), pp. 527-549.
16 Jolande Withuis and Annet Mooij, The Politics of War Trauma: The Aftermath of World War II in Eleven European Countries (Amsterdam University Press, 2011).
17 The emperor himself would reiterate this when he visited Hiroshima on the very significant date of December 7th 1946. Here the emperor affirmed the very American eguation of Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima as comparable actions.
18 The classic account of this is John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, 1st ed. (W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), pp. 489-490.
19 Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), p.5.
20 As I demonstrate in my book, it took at least a decade for hibakusha to start organize as hibakusha. At the beginning they organized together with other bombing victims in other cities. See Zwigenberg, Hiroshima, pp. 73-74.
21 Ibid. Especially chapter 1.
22 This day [August 6th],“ went the committee's declaration, ”should be [a] day for silent prayer and not, as the peace movement tried to make it, a cover for anti-occupation activities.“ The committee further called on residents, ”not to participate in these anti-Japanese criminal activities.“ See Hiroshima Shi, ”Shimin no mina sama he,“ Hiroshima Memorial Museum Archive, Kawamoto Collection, Folder 37. See also Hiroshima-ken, Genbaku Sanjūnen: Hiroshima-ken No Sengoshi, Dai 1-han. (Hiroshima-shi: Hiroshima-ken, 1976), p. 198.
23 Quoted in Ran Zwigenberg, “The Coming of a Second Sun”: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and Japan's Embrace of Nuclear Power,“ The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol. 10, Issue 6 No 1, February 6, 2012.
24 Ibid.
25 Avner Cohen, “Before the Beginning: The Early History of Israel's Nuclear Project,” Israel Studies, Volume 3, Number 1, (Spring 1998), p. 114.
26 Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: the Israelis and the Holocaust, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), p. 428.
27 Mordechai Shenhabi, who went on to initiated the Yad Vashem idea, first proposed a memorial in September 1942. Tom Segev, Ha'milion ha'shviai: yisraelim veha'shoaa, (Tel Aviv: Domino Publishing, 1991), p. 369.
28 See ibid. Also, Yoel. Rappael (ed.) Zikaron galui - Zikaron Samui: Todaat ha-shoa be medinat yisrael, (Tel-Aviv: Massuah, 1998); Idith Zertal, Ha'auma vehamavet: historia, zicharon, politika. (Tel Aviv: Dvir Press, 2002).
29 Doron Bar, “Holocaust Commemoration in Israel During the 1950s: The Holocaust Cellar on Mount Zion,” Jewish Social Studies 12, no. 1 (2005), p. 16. Mt. Zion was traditional place of worship and mourning Jews. In here and the Shoa (Holocaust) basement the commemoration was done mostly by religious communities and emphasized the loss of communities and synagogues rather than individuals or the “nation.” Yad Vashem, was the official state sanctioned memorial.
30 Roni Stauber, The Holocaust in Israeli Public Debate in the 1950s: Ideology and Memory (New York: Valentine Mitchell, 2007), p. 122.
31 Segev, pp. 259-262. Judenrat was the name given by the Germans to the Jewish self-government that managed Jewish ghettos before the extermination campaign. Kapos, were the Jewish superintendents who supervised other prisoners in the camps. Those serving on these bodies were accused of being traitors to the Jewish people after the war. Trials of Kapos and others were started in Europe by community courts and continued in Israel. Rudolf Kastner, a particularly prominent Hungarian-Jewish leader, was put on trial accused of saving a small number of privileged people, including his family, in a deal with the Germans, while the rest of the community was sent to Auschwitz.
32 Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness, (Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 72.
33 Lagrou, “The Politics of Memory. Resistance as a Collective Myth in Post-war France, Belgium and the Netherlands, 1945-1965.”
34 Sonja Niederacher, “The Myth of Austria as Nazi Victim, the Emigrants and the Discipline of Exile Studies,” Austrian Studies, Vol. 11, ‘Hitler's First Victim‘? Memory and Representation in Post-War Austria (2003), pp. 14-32
35 Ran Shauli, “Massacres and Political Amnesia: On the Political Value of Memory of Massacres in the Chinese Communities of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore (1941-1998),” Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Haifa (2008).
36 Cited in Hanna Yablonka, “Mishpat Eichmann ve'ha'yisraelim: me'ketz 40 shana.” (accessed 12 February 2011).
37 Daniel Gutwein, “The Privatization of the Holocaust: Memory, Historiography, and Politics,” Israel Studies 14, no. 1 (2009): 36-64.
38 Zwigenbrg, Hiroshima, pp. 182-188.
39 Asahi Shinbun, 12 April 1961.
40 Yomiuri Shinbun, 11 April 1961.
41 Quoted in David G. Goodman and Masanori Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype (Lexington Books, 2000), p. 152.
42 The JSDF 13th Division commander told the press, “the current Japanese think about the world, or about themselves as individuals. In between, there are, the family and the nation, and I want people to appreciate this and teach more patriotism.” Chūgoku Shinbun, 1 November 1965. The ceremony that concluded the march was held in Hiroshima's local Defense-of-the-Nation Shrine (gokoku jinja). These shrines which were set up during imperial times to honor those who died in Japan's wars were officially separated from state control in 1945 to be run by a supposedly private body “The Shrine Shinto Association,” which was formed after the war. The Association, however, retained powerful connections with the ruling party and continuously promoted conservative and nationalist values. Like the JSDF as a whole, the Association, and especially the National Defense Shrine connection to the military, is constitutionally suspect of having a history of covert right-wing agenda. For an overview of the issue see Norma Field, In the Realm of a Dying Emperor, (New York: Vintage Books, 1992). For a history of the Association see Seraphim, War Memory. In Hiroshima itself the issue was even more sensitive as the site of the shrine was also the site of the former Imperial Headquarters, which served Emperor Meiji in the first Sino-Japanese War.
43 See Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000); Michael E. Staub, Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America (Columbia University Press, 2004).
44 Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (University of California Press, 1999).
45 For Hashimoto see here (accessed 30 July 2015); For Kawamura Takashi, Nagoya's mayor, see here (accessed 30 July 2015).
46 Yinan He, “History, Chinese Nationalism, and the Emerging Sino-Japanese Conflict.” Journal of Contemporary China 16, no. 50 (February 2007), pp. 1-24.
47 Ibid., pp. 254-256.
48 Zwigenberg, Hiroshima, p. 257.
49 Asahi Shinbun, 16 February 1990.
50 Akiko Naono, “Hiroshima' as a Contested Memorial Site: Analysis of the Making of the Peace Museum,” Hiroshima Journal of International Studies, Vol. 11 (2005), pp. 229-244.
51 Noaono, p. 234.
52 Segev, The Seventh Million, p. 477
53 Ibid.
54 Boaz Evron, Hashoa -sakana la'auma, Iton 77, No. 22 (May-June 1980), p. 13; the letter is reproduced (in English) in Boaz Evron, “The Holocaust: Learning the Wrong Lessons,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3, (Spring, 1981), pp. 16-21.
55 Idith Zertal, “ha-shoa besiach ha-yisraeli; mabat acher,” Yimiyahu Yuval and David Shechem (ed.) Zman yehudi hadash: tarbut yehudit be-idan hiloni: mabat exnziklopadi, Vol. 4, (Jerusalem: Keter, 2007), p. 308.
56 Amos Goldberg, “The ‘Jewish Narrative’ in the Yad Vashem Global Holocaust Museum,” Journal of Genocide Research, Vol 14. No. 2, (June 2012), p. 187.
57 Kenzō Tange, who was responsible for Hiroshima's postwar city plan, as well as the building of the Hiroshima memorial museum, saw his work as one of spiritual transformation. Spiritual renewal would come through “the making of Hiroshima into a factory for peace” {heiwa wo tsukuridasu no tame kōgyō de aritai). Le Corbusier, Tange's inspiration, famously used the phrase a “machine for living.” See Kenzō Tange, “Hiroshima heiwa kinen tōshi ni kankei shite,” in Kenchiku zasshi, (October, 1949), p. 42. Le Corbusier used the phrase a “machine for living.”
58 The Korean hibakusha presence was noted only decades later in a small memorial outside the peace park. The memorial was moved inside the park in the 1990s. See Lisa Yoneyama, “Memory Matters: Hiroshima's Korean Atom Bomb Memorial and the Politics of Ethnicity,” in Laura Elizabeth Hein and Mark Selden, Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age (M.E. Sharpe, 1997).
59 Ibid., p. 202