Memory Matters: Hiroshima's Korean Atom Bomb Memorial and the Politics of Ethnicity

Abstract

Universal history has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive; it musters a mass of data to fill the homogeneous, empty time. ... A histori cal materialist approaches a historical subject only where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he recognizes the sign of a Messianic cessa tion of happening, or put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past.

The orphaned nation: Korea imagined as an overseas adopted child in Clon'sAbandoned Childand Park Kwang‐su'sBerlin Report

“…Hundreds of thousands of young Korean males were mobilied for labour service in Japan, while around 320,000 were drafted as military personnel and stationed within the extensive Japanese Empire of whom a total of 70,000 died from hardships, during war operations or as unintentional victims of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Yoneyama 1995). In addition, tens of thousands of young Korean girls had been forced to serve as 'comfort women' in the Japanese army, of whom probably a minority survived and returned to Korea after the war (Yoshiaki 1995).…”

Specificities: 'The Indians Accept Death as a Normal, Natural Event': Institutional Authority, Cultural Reasoning, and Discourses of Genocide in a Venezuelan Cholera Epidemic

“…In his study of a¯ood that decim ated m ining communities, Kai Erikson comm en ts on the`extraordinary repetitiveness ' of narratives that recount the event`almost as if a script had been passed around the creek ' (1977, p. 198). Robert Jay Lifton (1968) argues that a discursive process of`formulation' played a crucial role in overcoming`death anxiety' for D iscourses of G eno cide in a V enezuelan Cholera Epidem ic 459 survivors of the U S nuclear attack on H iros him a; recent resea rch by Lisa Yoneyama (1995) sugg ests that this process rem ains important in the social and political life of the city. Sim ilarly, delta resid en ts' creation and circulation of gen ocide narratives is both a psycho-social and an aesth etic accomplish ment that w as instrum en tal in turnin g terror and disorientation into sh ared design s for getting on w ith life.…”