Abstract
The voices of A-bomb survivors are getting lost in this multimedia environment as the world stage has become crowded. Hibakusha’s legacy and teachings are taking the back seat in this over-informed, twenty four hours a day news cycles, twitter accounts, and online newsfeeds, in order to leave room to sensationalism and junk news. The world media has its own biased political agendas to present to the world, most of the time purposely avoiding socially relevant issues in favor of mundane topics too insignificant to dignify in any respectful media environment. I call these the politics of distraction; feed the audiences with the futile and hope they forget or do not notice what is relevant. Therefore, how can we hold on to one of the most important lessons in modern history? How can we employ the detailed recollections of hibakusha and introduce them into the global discourse against weapons of mass destruction’s proliferation? How do we preserve and advance hibakusha’s memories as vivid and tangible testimonies of what not to repeat? How do we involve current generations into advocating for an atomic bomb free world? In this paper, I am looking at personal narratives both inside and outside of Japan; I am listening to young and mature voices’ position on this matter; I am evaluating the legacy of the Atomic bomb discourse, as it developed in A-bomb survivors’ personal narratives, in a contemporary and intercultural context, to call also for more participation from all nations into the world peace movement that the city of Hiroshima has been promoting since 1945.
Author Information
Gloria R Montebruno Saller, University of La Verne, United States
Paper Information
Conference: LibrAsia2014
Stream: Literature
This paper is part of the LibrAsia2014 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Saller G. (2014) Atomic Bomb’s Survivors’ Personal Narratives in Contemporary and Intercultural Contexts: Lessons Yet to Be Learned ISSN: 2186-2281 – The Asian Conference on Literature and Librarianship 2014 – Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/2186-2281.20140497
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/2186-2281.20140497
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