The US and the Atomic Memory Hole


In the dystopian novel 1984 George Orwell came up with the idea of the "memory hole" where an authoritarian state would control the present by controlling what people remembered about the past. Winston Smith's job was to rewrite the past in the light of the current needs of the regime. Historical figures or events which challenged the current regime's purposes were literally removed from history and consigned to a "memory hole" from which they never returned. Something similar is happening with the history of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WW2.

Greg Mitchell in Editor and Publisher notes the latest chapter in this saga of denial and rewriting of history. The Las Vegas Atomic Testing Museum continues the practice established by the Smithsonian's Enola Gay exhibit by focussing almost exclusively on the technical and scientific aspects of the bomb testing or the bomber (with just a nod to patriotism and manifest destiny) and removing all reference to the historical context and the impact on civilian society (whether Japanese or Nevadan). [More]

In the dystopian novel 1984 George Orwell came up with the idea of the "memory hole" where an authoritarian state would control the present by controlling what people remembered about the past. Winston Smith's job was to rewrite the past in the light of the current needs of the regime. Historical figures or events which challenged the current regime's purposes were literally removed from history and consigned to a "memory hole" from which they never returned. Something similar is happening with the history of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WW2.

Greg Mitchell in Editor and Publisher notes the latest chapter in this saga of denial and rewriting of history. The Las Vegas Atomic Testing Museum continues the practice established by the Smithsonian's Enola Gay exhibit by focussing almost exclusively on the technical and scientific aspects of the bomb testing or the bomber (with just a nod to patriotism and manifest destiny) and removing all reference to the historical context and the impact on civilian society (whether Japanese or Nevadan).

I went out of my way in 1995 to visit the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington DC since it was the 50 anniversary of the atomic bombings and I was teaching this topic in my course "Responses to War: An Intellectual and Cultural History". I was appalled to see how the exhibit had been gutted of content and sanitised of historical and moral significance in order to serve the political needs of the regime. I later read about the sad affair in Judgment at the Smithsonian, ed. Philip Noble (Marlowe, 1995) and History Wars, ed. Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt (Henry Holt, 1996).

The entire atomic bomb denial is put into a broader context in Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial. ed. Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell (Avon 1996).

Posted: Sun - April 17, 2005 at 05:23 PM        

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