Hibiki Yamaguchi, Fumihiko Yoshida and Radomir Compel
Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament
Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a US citizen born in Japan, challenges the prevailing American view that the US decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary or justified as a means of compelling Japan's surrender.
In the 1940s, a series of books tried to use the conventions of detective fiction to expose the degree of prejudice in postwar America. Their books — along with Sinatra’s song and film; Richard Wright’s memoir, coincided with a surge of activism.
Can it be enough to denounce the evils of the past? I believe it’s not enough if we fail to rise up in protest against the fact that democracy -- in the name of which so many young partisans went to fight, has become marked by inequality and arrogance of the powers-that-be – is unable to make obvious the reasons why it was the bitter enemy of Fascism.
The author is strongest when he deals with the government’s direct attempts to influence public opinion through comics either through the Writers’ War Board (WWB) of World War II or the creation of propaganda comics during the early Cold War.
Putin has squandered the moral credit conferred on Russia by its immense contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany. That truth will be devastating to the Russian mind and soul.
“Has the prevailing memory of the ‘Good War,’ shaped as it has been by nostalgia, sentimentality and jingoism, done more harm than good to Americans’ sense of themselves and their country’s place in the world?”
Lots of Reader Comments: Kenosha Killer; White Supremacists Attack on Democracy; How Textbooks Taught White Supremacy; Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan, Red Army Did; The Harder They Fall; New resource on Black films; Howard Zinn; Announcements; more ....
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