It’s widely known as a crowdfunding record-breaker, but the painstaking work to recreate Hiroshima in a new anime film is a nod to its traditional roots.
President Obama unveils ‘Prague Agenda’ on nukes in 2009.
EPA
With a $1 trillion modernisation programme signed off and atomic scientists deeply worried about the future, American policy on nuclear weapons is pretty much business as usual.
For Australia, the US election should provide an opportunity to rethink defence relationships, especially as they relate to nuclear weapons.
Issei Kato/Reuters
Some are calling on the president to issue an apology when he visits Hiroshima. But an East Asia expert says his visit will focus on remembrance, and explains why that is enough.
President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Any nuclear weapon exchange or major nuclear plant meltdown will immediately lead to a global public health emergency. What can we learn from past events to help prepare?
Two months after the bombing at Hiroshima.
US Department of Defense
US military censors contained information after the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leaving Americans with a limited understanding of the impact of radiation.
The average age of survivors is now 80. In five years, very few of these first-hand witnesses will be around to remember the event. Many of their stories are in danger of being lost forever.
Tomiko Matsumoto, an 83-year-old A-bomb survivor, at the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima.
EPA/Kimimasa Mayama
News of the Hiroshima bombing spread quickly to the US public but, thanks to science fiction writers, atomic bombs were discussed more before the war began than during it.
The Museum of Science and Industry in Hiroshima, August 1945.
Everett Historical / Shutterstock.com
John Hersey’s article Hiroshima (1946) is seminal in historical and literary terms: the shocking realities of the atomic bomb demanded a new way of writing.
On August 6, 1945, a crude bomb containing 60 kilograms of highly enriched uranium exploded 580 metres above Hiroshima.
EPA/Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
Today’s nuclear arsenals are so powerful that dropping a Hiroshima-size bomb every two hours for 70 years would not exhaust their destructive capacity. The global disarmament regime is broken.
A major challenge facing writers who want to take on the Bomb is that conventional description fails.
EPA/HIROSHIMA PEACE MEMORIAL MUSEUM HANDOUT
Hollywood has kept its distance from the bombing of Hiroshima, 70 years ago, and novelists, aside from sci-fi authors, have largely ignored the catastrophe as a means of exploring human nature. Why?
Blowing up the desert – and people’s minds: the first atom bomb test in 1945.
US Government
The first atom bomb test seventy years ago today marks the start of a change in Americans’ thinking about radiation. On balance, our nuclear anxieties endure today.