Prof.Tanaka's lecture

From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and "Peaceful Uses of nuclear Power"

Description:
It is well known that the origin of “the peaceful use of nuclear energy” was part of “Atoms for Peace,” a policy that U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched at the U.N. General Assembly in late 1953. What the U.S. Government really aimed at through this policy was to contain the power of the Soviet Union, the nation which carried out its first hydrogen bomb test in August that year. “Atoms for Peace” was devised to subjugate Western nations to the U.S. government and American capitalism through the provision of nuclear fuel and technology. Japan was included in these targeted nations, as U.S. government officials thought it would be particularly beneficial to promote “the peaceful use of nuclear energy” in the nation that had been the victim of the world’s first atomic bombing. The lecture examines how Hiroshima was specifically targeted by the United States for the purpose of promoting nuclear technologies, and consequently how not only A-bomb survivors but also the majority of the Japanese people became heavily influenced by the “Atoms for Peace” propaganda. The lecture also examines the interrelationship between Japan’s nuclear energy program and its hidden but continuing interest in maintaining the capability to produce nuclear weapons.

Recommended Readings:
Yuki Tanaka ‘Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and the 'Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Power,'’ with Peter Kuznick, posted at Japan Focus (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yuki-TANAKA/3521), April 2011
‘The Atomic Bomb and 'Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy,'’ posted at Japan Focus (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Yuki-TANAKA/3502), March 2011.
Ran Zwigenberg‘The Coming of a Second Sun’: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and Japan's Embrace of Nuclear Power,’posted at Japan Focus (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ran-Zwigenberg/3685), February 2012.

Name:Yuki TANAKA

Present Post and Title: Professor, Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City University

Final Education: University of Western Australia, Ph.D.

Specialized Field: War Crimes and War History

Recent Publications:
* Genpatsu to Hiroshima [Nuclear Power and Hiroshima], co-authored with Peter Kuznick and published as an Iwanami Booklet (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2011), 68pp.
* Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation (with Foreword by Susan Brownmiller) (London: Routledge, 2002), 212pp.
* Beyond Victor's Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Revisited (Leiden, Martinus Nijhoff Publisheres, 2011), 420pp., co-edited with Tim McCormack and Gerry Simpson.
* Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-century History (New York: The New Press, 2009), 291pp., co-edited with Marilyn B. Young.
* Hiroshima: A Tragedy Never To Be Repeated (Translation with Jo King of work by Nasu Masaomi with illustration by Nishimura Shigeo) (Tokyo: Fukuinkan Shoten, 1998. This book is available at the bookshop in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.)

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