Hiroshima and Manila: Experiences and Memories of Loss in World War II

Reviewed by: Soviet Operational and Tactical Combat in Manchuria, 1945 ‘August Storm’, and: The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945 Curtis S. King Soviet Operational and Tactical Combat in Manchuria, 1945 ‘August Storm’. By David M. Glantz. Portland, Oreg.: Frank Cass, 2003. ISBN 0-7146-5300-4. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Figures. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvi, 368. $59.50. The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945. By David M. Glantz. Portland, Oreg.: Frank Cass, 2003. ISBN 0-7146-5279-2. Maps. Photographs. Illustrations. Tables. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxviii, 451. $59.50. This reviewer has had the pleasure of reading many of David Glantz's works on the Eastern Front in World War Two and the privilege of reviewing several of those efforts. In so doing, I had noticed a pattern: Glantz's research and grasp of detail has always been extensive, but his writing in earlier works was often dry. In later works, Glantz has shown a more deft writing touch, particularly in books such as Zhukov's Greatest Defeat, Stumbling Colossus, and When Titans Clash (co-authored by Jonathan House). Unfortunately, Glantz's two volume history of the Soviet offensive in Manchuria, while maintaining a high standard of research and detail, is so mechanistically written as to be useful mostly as a source book, not as a readable narrative of the campaign. Glantz's theme in both volumes is straightforward, to show that the Soviets executed their offensive in Manchuria with tremendous skill. The first, Strategic, book states that the "Manchurian campaign represented and still represents the highest stage of military art the Red Army reached during its operations during the Second World War" (p. xxvi). Similarly, the Operational and Tactical volume posits that "the massive scale of the Soviet [End Page 1299] attack was matched by the audaciousness, skill, and relentlessness with which it was conducted" (p. xvii). This reviewer is sympathetic to efforts that dispel the myth that Soviet victories depended solely on a massive advantage in numbers, and Glantz makes a good general case for the skill of Soviet commanders and the efficacy of their doctrine. However, Glantz occasionally seems to overstate his case. Both volumes are replete with descriptions of Soviet advances against negligible opposition, Japanese disarray and lack of resources, and spectacular offensives after the dropping of the American atomic bomb and the initiation of surrender discussions between Soviet and Japanese officials. In short, the overall shortage of Japanese troops and equipment, as well as the hopelessness of their situation—despite the Japanese soldiers' fighting prowess—make it hard to measure Soviet skill on the battlefield. Given this caveat, Glantz has a strong case for Soviet skill at achieving surprise and overcoming difficult terrain, but a less firm claim concerning the Red Army's skill with echelons, maneuver, and formations. The structure of the two volumes follows an interesting approach that has much merit. The Strategic book gives an overview of the campaign and sets the "big picture" for the reader. The Operational and Tactical volume contains a selection of case studies, which provide greater detail on the operations of the Soviet forces. The two part structure allows the author to make his overall case before looking at specific operational and tactical fights. While this method could lead to a selective use of case studies, Glantz has chosen his samples well. There are examples of major mechanized offensives, advances over tremendously difficult terrain, battles for fortified regions, amphibious operations, and many other varieties of tactical combat. A more traditional, strictly chronological, approach would not have allowed for the detail found in the individual case studies, and Glantz should be applauded for this fresh approach. Unfortunately, the strengths of Glantz's work are marred by a writing style that makes both volumes a difficult read. These writing weaknesses are revealed early in the first, Strategic, volume. Of 346 pages of 'text' (more on Glantz's text below) in this volume, 181 pages are devoted to planning for the offensive. More than half of the book discusses preparations, unit structures, terrain, the whole accompanied by overwhelming statistical data. Often tables of statistical information are repeated in the narrative and the reader is left in...

How did the Japanese and American soldiers lead their men in combat? Drawing on the individual experiences of combat during the Guadalcanal campaign, characteristics of combat leadership exercised by the non-commissioned officers and junior officers of the Japanese Army and the American Army and Marine Corps are examined. The combat leadership styles of the American and Japanese soldiers are compared to see if there are any cultural differences or similarities. In particular, combat leadership principles espoused by the battle-seasoned soldiers on both sides are illustrated according to testimonies of the individual soldiers whom the author interviewed more than 20 years ago. Oral histories of primary and secondary sources are also used for describing combat leadership experiences. In conclusion, I argue that the hard-learned combat leadership principles in extreme situations like those on Guadalcanal are almost identical among the Japanese and American tactical leaders, although there are slight cultural differences.

The View of the Japanese Enemy 75 Years after the End of World War II Kirsten L. Ziomek (bio) Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio, Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific 1944–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 711 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95. After the defeat of Germany in May 1945, the United States wanted to end the war with Japan as quickly as possible. But Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio contend that this was impossible as the United States was not in the position to launch a successful invasion of mainland Japan. One of the questions that Implacable Foes sets out to answer is how the conflict arrived at the point that the United States needed to be saved by both the atomic bombs and Hirohito's intervention in favoring surrender, because the prospects of a successful U.S. invasion of Japan did not look good. The book's premise is novel in that it challenges a common narrative that the dominant United States, with all its industrial might, men, and matériel was the certain victor in 1945. The authors depict a United States government and military that still considered themselves the underdog versus the Japanese who had not won a battle since the loss of Midway in 1942. Despite the Japanese fighting a two-front war in China for eight years and for four years in the Pacific theater, with a dwindling amount of supplies, trained pilots, and resources necessary to wage war, the United States still did not like its chances in launching an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Japan had 69 cities that had already been firebombed prior to the atomic bombings, and their military had to resort to kamikaze tactics in 1944 as their primary strategy from the air out of their sheer desperation caused by their lack of skilled pilots and planes. That the Japanese posed such a formidable threat raises questions: was the United States really incapable of launching a successful invasion of Japan or was it that the government and public simply did not have an appetite for further fighting with boots on the ground? The authors argue that both are true. This substantial book is primarily focused on the American order of battle, the personalities of several "great men" like General Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall, and detailing the internal wrangling that U.S. government officials and military leaders went through when confronted with the prospect [End Page 582] of continuing the Pacific war well past the end of fighting on the European front. References to Japanese soldiers, which are relatively rare, often rely on depictions of them as fanatics who fought to the death: "[The Americans] were engaged in a war of annihilation against an enemy resigned to his own death and determined to fight on for the sole purpose of killing as many Americans as possible" (p. 8). Although the authors try to provide balance by pointing out that American soldiers—like the Japanese—also committed brutalities during the war, (pp. 77–80) brief mentions do not obviate the overwhelming sense that pervades the book that the Japanese were an enemy of a sort that American soldiers had never encountered before. Refuting John Dower in War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1987), which argues that the Pacific War was a race war that fueled hatred on both sides, the authors contend that Japanese soldiers were unique and unlike their American counterparts. "That war with the Japanese was a battle for survival, a struggle without sanctuary, came as a shock to the American soldier. Surrender meant barbaric death, to survive meant killing" (p. 79). While it is true that official Japanese military doctrine discouraged soldiers from surrendering, whether this resulted in American soldiers being less willing to fight for their lives than the Japanese is debatable. More groundwork and substantial evidence would help advance their argument against Dower's. Regardless, the book was never intended to be about the foes of America, but instead the focus was meant to be (and is) on how the American government and military officials saw their options to end the war in light of the...

Reviewed by: No Uncle Sam: The Forgotten of Bataan George H. Curtis No Uncle Sam: The Forgotten of Bataan. By Tony Bilek in collaboration with Gene O’Connell. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2003. ISBN 087338-768-6. Maps. Photographs. Index. Pp. xviii, 260. $34.00. At the opening of hostilities in the Philippines on 8 December 1941 (local time), private first class Anton "Tony" F. Bilek witnessed the decimation of a significant portion of the United States Far East Air Force at Clark Field on the island of Luzon. In his memoirs, No Uncle Sam, Bilek describes that event as well as his efforts and those of his unit, the 28th Material Squadron, in maintaining the remnants of the American air force based at Clark Field and, later, on the Bataan Peninsula. Most of his book, however, deals with Bilek's experiences as a prisoner of war, beginning on 10 April 1942, when he and thousands of American and Filipino troops formally surrendered to the Imperial Japanese Army. Although already suffering from malnutrition, Bilek survived the infamous Bataan Death March and ensuing train ride to Camp O'Donnell. He describes in considerable detail the various phases of that journey and his experiences at two POW camps in the Philippines (O'Donnell and Cabanatuan), aboard a Japanese transport en route to Japan, and at Camp 17 and the coal mines located near Omuta, Japan. Understandably, much of his memoir covers health-related experiences. Throughout his imprisonment, he was afflicted with numerous diseases and illnesses, including beriberi, [End Page 1287] malaria, and pneumonia. While working in the Japanese coal mines, he suffered injuries serious enough to warrant the consideration of amputation. The scope of Bilek's highly readable and interesting memoirs, however, extends well beyond the subject of personal health. In fact, it appears to cover nearly every conceivable aspect of life as a POW in the custody of the Japanese military, including such subjects as American collaborators, air raids, abuse by Japanese soldiers and civilians, prisoner work details, prison camp facilities, and, perhaps most emphatically, food and the lack thereof. As grim as many of his experiences were, there are also occasional traces of humor in Bilek's book, such as the unsuspecting Japanese guard who demanded tutoring in the English language and to his embarrassment was taught to sing the Star Spangled Banner. Then there are the stories about Concrete Annie, a Japanese civilian worker at Camp 17 who exhibited considerable interest in the Allied POWs. Although critical of the failure of the United States to provide more assistance to the "Battling Bastards of Bataan," Bilek also defends his country's actions in the closing month of the war. In the concluding paragraph of his book he states: "Since the end of the war, the United States has been accused of being immoral for using the atomic bomb against Japan. But the arguments behind this accusation are lost on the surviving POWS. To us, the decision was not only appropriate, but it was probably the only reason we left captivity alive." George H. Curtis Blue Springs, Missouri Copyright © 2004 Society for Military History

Research Article| December 01 2000 From Yellow Peril to Japanese Wasteland: John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” Patrick B. Sharp Patrick B. Sharp Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Twentieth-Century Literature (2000) 46 (4): 434–452. https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2000-1002 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Patrick B. Sharp; From Yellow Peril to Japanese Wasteland: John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”. Twentieth-Century Literature 1 December 2000; 46 (4): 434–452. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2000-1002 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsTwentieth-Century Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © Hofstra University2001 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Articles You do not currently have access to this content.

Atomic Historiography Michael Kimmage (bio) Rosemary B. Mariner and G. Kurt Piehler, eds. The Atomic Bomb and American Society: New Perspectives. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009. Illustrations, bibliography, index, and notes. xxxi + 447 pp. $42.00. The large-scale periodization of American history rests on a few phrases, usually referring to a military conflict of one kind or another. There is the age of conquest, the revolutionary age, the antebellum era, the interwar years, the postwar period and, finally, the atomic or nuclear age. This is the age that began definitively with the creation of the atomic bomb, and it encompasses both the Cold War, which would not have been cold without atomic weapons, and the rise of the nuclear family. One could go a step further and describe the individualism of the postwar period as atomistic individualism, as if the mobile atom—and its power—were metaphors for modern culture and modern geopolitics alike. The Atomic Bomb and American Society, a collection of essays edited by Rosemary B. Mariner and G. Kurt Piehler, takes as its working premise the link between atomic weaponry and the drift of postwar American history. Based on a 2005 conference held in Oak Ridge, Tennessee—itself a significant site in atomic and American history—The Atomic Bomb and American Society is devoted to charting “the social swath of this atomic sword [nuclear weapons] in the context of the Cold War” and to examining the atomic bomb and “its lead role in the culture surrounding the Cold War” (pp. xix, xxiii). The included essays range from military to cultural history, from women’s history to the history of public memory. They demonstrate how wide the bomb’s “social swath” was, wider perhaps than Americans may have known during the Cold War. In the volume’s concluding essay, “The Challenges of Preserving America’s Nuclear Weapons Complex,” Jason Krupar remarks on the vastness and the relative invisibility of America’s nuclear weapons complex. “The Cold War created a national web of black spaces,” Krupar writes, “zones hidden from public sight even while located in the midst of it” (p. 399). The Atomic Bomb and American Society helps to illuminate these black spaces, without fully proving the bomb’s lead role in the culture surrounding the Cold War. In an essay that frames this volume as a whole, “Sixty Years and Counting: Nuclear Themes in American Culture, 1945 to the Present,” Paul Boyer [End Page 145] addresses the complexity of the bomb’s role in postwar American culture. A distinguished historian of American culture and the bomb, Boyer breaks this role into three phases: an early phase of anxiety, running from 1945 to the mid-1950s; a relaxation of fear in the 1960s and 1970s, after the Cuban Missile Crisis had passed without incident; and a widening fear of atomic catastrophe in the late 1970s and 1980s.1 Boyer emphasizes that nuclear fear or questions prompted by the existence of nuclear weapons were unsteady variables in American culture, waxing and waning for the duration of the Cold War. Nor did nuclear questions disappear together with the Cold War: the 1995 dispute over the Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibition demonstrated precisely how unmasterable America’s nuclear past had remained, some six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.2 What did disappear after 1989, according to Boyer, was the coherence or urgency that had previously been attached to nuclear questions. “In contrast to earlier eras, a fundamental disconnect arose between politics and the popular culture” after the Cold War, Boyer writes (p. 14). Nuclear proliferation was sharply relevant as a strategic issue in the 1990s, while American popular culture was celebrating the harmless incompetence of Homer Simpson, the cartoon employee of an atomic energy plant (p. 14). And yet, the old fears were still there under the surface, made worse, in fact, by the fading of the Cold War. “During the Cold War, the adversary was at least the nation-state headed by rational leaders with whom one could negotiate,” Boyer states. “In the volatile destabilized post–Cold War world, lethal menace could lurk anywhere, and the popular culture reflected the resulting anxieties” (p. 12). One...

Coping affects somatic and psychological outcomes. This article explores narratives in a book, Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers, which report on the ways of coping used by each kamikaze participant before and during military service. The purpose of this study is to observe the possibility of a trend in coping strategies and consider how these trends inform us about other populations facing imminent death. This study analyzed data and extracted meaning from the narratives in the book (thematic content analysis). Within the thematic content analysis, the Ways of Coping scale was used, which describes the coping strategies people use when facing problems. The most frequently used coping strategies before they entered the military were "Accept Responsibility," "Endurance/Obedience/Effort," and "Self-Control," while once in the military, they were "Accept Responsibility" and "Endurance/Obedience/Effort." All the coping strategies used by kamikaze pilots appeared to focus on the passive self, which may be the type of coping in other populations facing death.

Beauty vs. Horror in

DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR the atomic bomb was seen and valued as a potential rather than an actual instrument of policy. Responsible officials believed that its impact on diplomacy had to await its development and, perhaps, even a demonstration of its power. As Henry L. Stimson, the secretary of war, observed in his memoirs: The bomb as a merely probable weapon had seemed a weak reed on which to rely, but the bomb as a colossal reality was very different.' That policy makers considered this difference before Hiroshima has been well documented, but whether they based wartime diplomatic policies upon an anticipated successful demonstration of the bomb's power remains a source of controversy.2 Two questions delineate the issues in this debate. First, did the development of the atomic bomb affect the way American policy makers conducted diplomacy with the Soviet Union? Second, did diplomatic considerations related to the Soviet Union influence the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan? These important questions relating the atomic bomb to American diplomacy, and ultimately to the origins of the cold war, have been addressed almost exclusively to the formulation of policy during the early months of the Truman administration. As a result, two anterior

Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs

“At the heart of the matter nuclear weapons are simply the enemy of humanity”— retired U.S. Air Force General Lee Butler, former Commander of Strategic Nuclear Forces, spoke these words in his testimony to a 1999 Joint Senate–House Committee on Foreign Affairs. They probably express the deep feelings of most of the world’s people, including most Americans. Towering mushroom blast clouds and the shapes of atomic weapons are common symbols of doom. The specter of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists haunts us, and the possibility of attacks on U.S. citizens with “dirty bombs”—a bomb made of conventional explosives that scatters radioactive materials—raises major concerns. As it should. Nuclear weapons and the nuclear waste that they generate truly are destructive to all life and must be controlled. If we fail to prevent their proliferation in the world and stop generating them ourselves, they could destroy us without respect for national boundaries—even without a real nuclear war or dirty bomb terrorist attacks. They already have poisoned great expanses of American lands from coast to coast. American soil, water, and air started accumulating radioactive pollution during the World War II race to build an atom bomb. Radioactive contaminants spread into the environment at every step in the process, from mining the uranium for bomb fuel and purifying and enriching the uranium to make plutonium, to detonating bombs to test them and disposing of the wastes. Radioactive materials currently contaminate buildings, soil, sediment, rock, and underground or surface water within more than two million acres administered by the U.S. Department of Energy in the 11 western states. All sorts of Americans were carelessly exposed to radioactive bomb fuels during WWII and the Cold War, but especially the atomic scientists, uranium miners, and bomb plant workers who were exposed to them every day. For nearly two decades, U.S. atomic bombs blew up and contaminated American lands. Both American soldiers at the test grounds and civilians on ranches or farms and in homes were exposed to the dangerous radioactive fallout (see appendix 5). Perhaps unknown to most Americans is the fact that radioactive contamination from U.S. atomic weapons tests also spread across the whole country and far beyond U.S. borders.

While the histories of chemical and nuclear weapons are often categorically demarcated, this paper presents the transitional history between the development of early chemical weapons and the first atomic bomb in order to reveal both the institutional and imaginary connections between the two. In the wake of World War I, nationalized chemical weapons research provided one blueprint for the kind of large-scale military-industrial-academic complex required to build the atomic bomb. The German chemical weapons laboratories at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical and Electrochemistry (KWI), directed by Fritz Haber, were particularly successful in creating a hierarchical mobilization of people, funds, and materials that the Americans were able to replicate both in their own chemical weapons production and when building the atomic bomb in the early 1940s. Institutional and cultural similarities between these weapons programs were further fertilized by a strikingly similar interwar imagining of both chemical and radiological weapons. These prophecies prefigured certain eye-witness reports from the dropping of the first atomic bombs, where radioactive clouds supposedly spread over the bomb site. In reality, there were important distinctions in both power and method of destruction between chemical weapons and the atomic bomb, but the post–World War II positing of a newly demarcated “Atomic Age” created a conceptual distance between poison gas and nuclear weapons. By pointing to chemistry’s significant contributions (both real and imaginary) to the creation of the atomic bomb, this article reminds readers of the rhetorical similarities and institutional connections between the two weapons with an eye toward broadening our categorical understanding of the atmospheric weapons that still threaten the world today.

136 Akiko Takenaka Collecting for Peace: Memories and Objects of the Asia-Pacific War This essay begins with two images: a photograph and a poster. The photograph depicts a cluster of seemingly mundane objects: dust-covered bottles and bins, rusted tools and tool parts—many of them piled together in boxes, most of them without labels. I took the photograph in 2005 at the Haebaru Cultural Center in Okinawa. Haebaru Town was the central location for Japanese military field hospitals in the last months of the Asia-Pacific War, and the Cultural Center houses an exhibit of hospital -related material on the first floor, while a room on the second floor holds unmarked excess (Figure 1). The poster announces a 2005 joint project between the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the nuclear attacks on the two cities (Figure 2). It solicits donation of objects, photographs (iei), and memories associated with hibaku (literally , “recipients of the bomb”), a word used to describe people, objects, and buildings affected by atomic bombs. Many other museums throughout Japan exhibit similar kinds of objects: the material survivors of air raids and of atomic bombs, for the most part, but also items used to treat wounded Japanese soldiers or artifacts that survived a particular battle. Some objects, such as the charred lunch box from Hiroshima depicted on the poster, have become icons of the war. There are other iconic objects, particularly from Hiroshima, such as the clock that stopped at 8:15 or the scorched tricycle that belonged to Shin’ichi, a three-year-old boy who had been riding it when the bomb exploded. When placed prominently on display along with informative text, or when reproduced multiple times as photographs, the objects can create a lasting impression. But the Haebaru objects do not have that Figure 1. A view of a second-floor storage room, Haebaru Cultural Center, May 2005. Photograph by the author. Figure 2. Poster text reads, “Now is the time to tell us the truth of the bomb that scorched the boy’s lunchbox as well as his future.” Image from 60th Anniversary Project: Commemorative Exhibition for the 50th Anniversary of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Courtesy of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. 138 Akiko Takenaka kind of significance. I had already seen some of these objects that day— not in a pile, but singled out, highlighted, organized, and labeled—in the exhibit rooms downstairs. The pile of similar objects upstairs thus seemed extra, redundant, unnecessary. Despite the request for more objects, recent special exhibits at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum suggest that the relationship between much of the newly acquired material and the bomb experience is becoming increasingly tangential. For example, many of the objects and photographs on display during a special exhibit mounted in May 2012 belonged to people who were born in Hiroshima but not physically present in the city on August 6, 1945. Yet the call for objects and memories still stands.1 In addition, the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims and the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims each owns a separate collection of photographs and personal narratives of the atomic bomb victims and continues to call out for more. Many Japanese museums associated with war memories also post such calls for objects and memories. Why continue to collect this material seven decades after the war’s end? This essay explores efforts to collect material (objects, memoirs, oral history narratives, visual representations, building survivors) associated with Japanese home-front memories of the Asia-Pacific War. Numerous flyers and announcements call for more objects, more first-person narratives ; websites request more stories. And it is not just museums that are collecting. Various nonprofit organizations, private groups, and individuals also create websites and e-mail lists to collect stories. There are multiple reasons for this continued effort at collecting; the incentive for collecting differs across generations and has shifted in the decades since 1945. The reasons are sometimes practical: according to one curator, public history museums often receive requests from local residents to accept objects that survived the war...

Review: Radiological protection of the environment from the Swedish point of view L-E Holm et al (235-247) This is a review of the Swedish regulatory experiences of protecting the environment against harmful effects of ionising radiation. The Swedish radiation legislation aims at protecting both humans and the environment. The Swedish Parliament has established national environmental quality objectives with the purpose to hand over to the next generation a sustainable society. The Swedish Radiation Protection Society (SSI) has the responsibility for the objective of `A Safe Radiation Environment'. In its regulations concerning the final management of spent nuclear fuel and waste and releases of radioactive substances from nuclear facilities, SSI has formulated environmental aims that focus on protection of biodiversity and biological resources.Radiological impacts on organisms other than man of long-lived radionuclides M C Thorne et al (249-277) A case study is presented in which an assessment is made of the radiological impacts on organisms other than man of various long-lived radionuclides of importance in solid radioactive waste disposal. Threshold dose rates for the induction of significant deleterious effects on communities are estimated and it is shown that compliance with radiological protection standards appropriate to man will ensure that such thresholds are not exceeded. These results apply only to the radionuclides and assessment context considered, and the authors identify the need to build up a dossier of such case studies in support of the ICRP contention that the standard of environmental control needed to protect man from the effects of ionising radiations would ensure that other species were not put at risk.The proportion of thyroid cancers in the Japanese atomic bomb survivors associated with natural background gamma radiation M P Little (279-291) Absolute and relative risk models are fitted to the Japanese atomic bomb survivor thyroid cancer incidence data followed up over the period1958-1987, taking account of natural background radiation. Over 50% of the excess cases associated with either the atomic bomb radiation or natural background radiation are linked to exposures under the age of 20, irrespective of the assumed risk model or natural background dose rate (in the range 0.5-2.0 mSv/year). The excess risk is overwhelmingly concentrated among females, again irrespective of the assumed model or natural background dose rate. Depending on the assumed natural background dose rate and risk model between 4% and 32% of the thyroid cancers in this cohort may be associated with natural background radiation. The proportion of the thyroid tumours attributed to the atomic bomb radiation is between 19% and 22%, dependent on the assumed background radiation dose and risk model.Choice of alpha-probe operating voltage to suit a wide range of conditions R B Bosley and J A Simpson (293-303) Scintillation probes are used throughout the nuclear industry to monitor for alpha radiation. The ability to detect alpha radiation is dependent on a number of factors including the efficiency of the probe, and the surface being monitored. In the past, it has been assumed that maximising the operating voltage and therefore the probe efficiency will improve the ability to detect alpha radiation. However, the work presented here suggests the characteristics of the surface being monitored have far more effect on the results of alpha monitoring than the choice of operating voltage.

I first met Josiah McElheny in September 2004, in the café of the Wexner Center for the Arts, for what turned out to be a 3-hour lunch. We were joined by Helen Molesworth, the Wexner Center’s head curator. From an earlier conversation with Helen, I knew that Josiah wanted to make a sculpture about the big bang, connected in some way to the chandeliers that hang in New York’s Metropolitan Opera House. Conveying an accurate understanding of the big bang is one of the hardest challenges I face in my introductory astronomy lectures, and I doubted that I could provide useful advice on how to do it with a sculpture. But by the end of our conversation we had identified a way forward, and after six years and four completed works, Josiah and I are still collaborating. Josiah and I have given numerous talks in the last two years, some individually and some jointly, on the four sculptures that have so far emerged from our collaboration: An End to Modernity (2005), The Last Scattering Surface (2006), The End of the Dark Ages (2008), and Island Universe (2008). I was delighted to participate in the Narrative, Science, and Performance symposium, which was an especially apt forum because of our project’s deep roots at Ohio State and the Wexner Center, and because of the symposium’s focus on the nexus between science and art. I have written elsewhere (see the Bibliography) about the scientific background of these works, explaining the “code ” that connects their elaborate arrangements of chrome-plated metal, glass disks and globes, and incandescent lamps to astronomical theories and observations. Here I will give just brief explanations of the science and focus instead on the history of the project, providing what I hope is an informative “case study ” of an ambitious collaborative effort at the art/science border. An End to Modernity