Hiroshima, 1945: Sometimes it's what's no longer there that is the most striking.
(Courtesy of International Center of Photography)
Levy found a suitcase full of black-and-white photographs telling the story of a devastated and destroyed post-atom bomb Hiroshima--a story many have heard, but few have fully seen.
"On september 18, 1945, just over a month after Japan had surrendered, the U.S. Government imposed a strict code of censorship on the newly defeated nation. It read in part: 'nothing shall be printed which might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility.'"
Keeping the images out of sight kept grief and anger directed at the U.S. and it's new weapon at bay. But Levy thinks that "this suppression of visual evidence served a third purpose: it helped, both in Japan and back home in America, to inhibit any questioning of the decision to use the bomb in the first place." Are visuals more jarring to emotional memory? And if so, can the censorship (or perhaps careful placement of) of choice visuals redirect the collective memory?
The first page of a Google Image search for "Hiroshima 1945" provides twenty pictures. Of the twenty photos, more than a third are of the foreign and brilliant mushroom cloud, while many of the remaining are far off aerial shots.
A similar search of "iraq war" leads to twelve photos of heroic soldiers and two of protestors. All but one of the twenty images regard Americans. When I repeated the search with the "News Content" filter on, I got nary a image of casualty American, Iraqi or anything else.
Sure, these aren't the only images the American public has witnessed of either event, nor are they the only one's left accessible. But if page hits mean anything, these seem to be the ones the linger closest in the collective memory.
With the Defense secretary warning of an aging U.S. nuclear arsenal and nuclear war looming (or, you know, not...), I do find myself hoping for tranquility. But shouldn't this peace of mind stem from a full understanding, rather than a carefully constructed and deceitful image? It's easier to traverse a landscape you know well, then one you simply think you know, so shouldn't we be given all the pictures and then we can decide what's right?
3 comments:
Absolutely fascinating subject. Intrigued by your source: DesignObserver. Refreshingly off-the-beaten-path. Scattered thoughts: "Keeping the images out of sight kept grief and anger directed at the U.S. and it's new weapon at bay." But what about John Hersey's famous New Yorker piece, which later became the book Hiroshima? Didn't that spark outrage? In other words, how effective was the government censorship, really? Didn't some images of the devastation at Ground Zero pop up in the newsmagazines? "Are visuals more jarring to emotional memory? And if so, can the censorship (or perhaps careful placement of) of choice visuals redirect the collective memory?" Good question. Why not answer it by thinking about the Bush administration's suppression of images of flag-draped coffins, funerals at Arlington, Iraqi civilian casualties, U.S. casualties? Is there a correlation between the dearth of images of this war and the sense, in some quarters, that it was antiseptic, at least initially? Has the real horror of Iraqi civilian deaths hit home? Or has it been blunted by the tactical suppression of images, as in Hiroshima? The nuclear premonitions at the end are a hairpin turn in mid-argument, derailing your flow. Still, a fascinating post; really like the way you forged the connection between Hiroshima, Iraq, and the role of images in our collective memory.
P.S. Grammar glitches: "its new weapon," not "it's new weapon"; "All but one of the 20 images relate to Americans" not "All but one of the twenty images regard Americans" (see usage of "regard"); "nary an image," not "nary a image"; "the ones the linger longest in the collective memory," not "the ones the linger closest in the collective memory." A strong dose of Strunk & White is advised.
Er, that should have been "...THAT linger longest."
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