This weekend’s anniversary of the end of World War II, coming at a time when we continue to talk heatedly about the film “Oppenheimer,” reminds me of how long I showed images of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud to introduce class lectures on wartime Japan. They were dramatic; they evoked power; they were horrific. And students loved them.
I could have used other images. I might have shown a photo of a man I met in 1979 at the Hiroshima bomb memorial. Standing with his daughter in front of thousands of peace cranes, he told me she was 34 but had the mind of an 8-year-old — because she was born on the day the bomb was dropped. Her mother died, and she survived.
