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.”

This paper explores the politics surrounding the dismantling of the ruins of Nagasaki's Urakami Cathedral. It shows how U.S-Japan relations in the mid-1950s shaped the 1958 decision by the Catholic community of Urakami to dismantle and subsequently to reconstruct the ruins. The paper also assesses the significance of the struggle over the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral for understanding the respective responses to atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It further casts new light on the wartime role of the Catholic Church and of Nagai Takashi.

excerpts from a blog written in the third person,

made while in residence in Hiroshima, summer, 2008 and then again in 2011.

You can see the entire blog here.

It is reprinted here with generous permission of The Volta online journal, where it was recently published in the issue Evening Will Come, dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time of this reprinting, slavick has been awarded a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship to return to Japan for a few months. She plans to continue her research in Hiroshima and to begin work in Nagasaki and Fukushima with plans to make a lead box in which she will place x-ray film and exposed objects to see if the lingering radiation makes exposures. Her solo show Seventy Year Old Shadows of Hiroshima, closes at Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles on August 29, 2015. This project is also currently on view in Brazil, Canada and Detroit, and will be included in the Kohler Art Center October exhibition Photography and the Scientific Spirit.

David Palmer's timely opinion piece in The Melbourne Age on 6 August 2015 draws attention to the little remembered history of scores of Australian and other allied POWs who were held as slave labourers in Japanese war industries in Nagasaki before and at the time of the atom bombing. Aspects of this neglected history also form a major component of my recent multi-screen, hyper-visualisation exhibition “Fading Lights: Australian POW and BCOF Troops in Japan 1945-52”, co-curated with Stuart Bender (Curtin University).

On August 6 “The Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th Century and on Japan's Role and World Order in the 21st Century” submitted its report to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Abe established this panel in February to provide input for his forthcoming statement commemorating the 70th anniversary of Japan's wartime defeat. At the Advisory Panel press conference, members insisted that it is entirely up to Abe whether or not to apologize as his predecessors did in 1995 and 2005. All signs are that Abe will not say what needs to be said because he seeks to end what revisionists deride as Japan's apology diplomacy and masochistic history.

Much is riding on what Abe says, and doesn't say, as South Korea and China are especially sensitive to any perceived backsliding on Japan's war responsibility and contrition. Japan finds itself isolated in East Asia over this history of colonial rule and imperial aggression and there are concerns among Japan's neighbors that Abe's rigid revisionist agenda will lead him to downplay Japan's misdeeds.