Atoms for Peace in Hiroshima: Kawaishi Kunio, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, and their Erasure Work
講者：飯田香穂里（総合研究大学院大学 統合進化科学研究センター 准教授）
時間：113/03/19（二）10:00-12:00
地點：人社二館 106A
主持人：洪紹洋（國立陽明交通大學科技與社會研究所、社會與文化研究所教授）
與談人：楊子樵（國立陽明交通大學社會與文化研究所助理教授）
主辦單位：國立陽明交通大學社會與文化研究所
▍演講大綱：
The US National Academy of Sciences established the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) in Japan in 1947 and led research with the atomic bomb survivors to elucidate medical effects of radiation. The long-term project in Japan required US-Japan collaborations but we know little about them. This paper examines one of such collaborations initiated by the Japanese side and argues that certain topics were avoided to maintain their relationship at its optimum. The case examined here is a proposal of Hiroshima University School of Medicine to establish a joint hospital for the survivors with ABCC. The central player of this negotiation was the dean of the School, Kawaishi Kunio (河石九二夫). The School needed a large financial support, and his team applied for a grant of the US Foreign Operations Administration (FOA) for the joint hospital plan. The ABCC director Robert Holmes assisted Kawaishi, hoping that this would improve the agency’s public relations. The US upper offices also took an interest in the proposal in the context of the US nuclear diplomacy toward Asia. In the end, the “joint” part of the hospital disappeared, and 108,000,000 yen was donated to each hospital of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Universities. Here I argue that multilayered “erasure work” has been in process. Most notably, during their negotiation with ABCC, local Japanese actors focused on “peaceful uses of atomic energy” to keep negotiations moving, thus erasing topics directly related to the survivors. I also discuss how this negotiation process, which does not sit comfortably in the domestic narrative about the survivors, has been erased from the current historiography.
