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Japanese and American Christian Narratives of The “DIVINE” INTERVENTION: JAPANESE AND AMERICAN CHRISTIAN NARRATIVES OF THE PACIFIC WAR, THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS, AND THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION By HILARY E. L. ELMENDORF A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of History MAY 2011 © Copyright by HILARY E. L. ELMENDORF, 2011 All Rights Reserved © Copyright by HILARY E. L. ELMENDORF, 2011 All Rights Reserved To the Faculty of Washington State University: The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of HILARY E. L. ELMENDORF find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted. ___________________________ Noriko Kawamura, Ph.D., Chair ___________________________ Raymond Sun, Ph.D. ___________________________ Matthew A. Sutton, Ph.D. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT At its best, research and writing grows from conversations among fellow academics, professors, colleagues, and friends. I have been privileged to earn my degrees in just such an environment at Washington State University. I owe my greatest debt to the mentorship of Dr. Noriko Kawamura, who served as the chair of both my thesis and dissertation committees and whose generosity and encouragement resulted in several trips to Japan, including the six-month Center of Excellence Fellowship at International Christian University in 2007 that generated this dissertation. International Christian University’s kind hospitality provided me with access to libraries, archives, and research trips to Hiroshima and Nagasaki that held a wealth of resources for this project and, just as importantly, allowed me to live and travel in the same nation I had spent so long studying. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Raymond Sun. I benefitted immensely from his courses in historiography and inter-war Europe, particularly through his discussions of war and memory; I appreciate his high academic standards and the drive that he instills in his students to interact with, understand, and apply the course readings and discussions to their own scholarship. Thanks to Dr. Matthew Sutton for his willingness to work with a student he had never met and for his expertise in American religious history. The excellent teaching of Dr. LeRoy Ashby and Dr. David Pietz contributed to my education at WSU by greatly expanding my understanding of the past. I remain indebted to my colleagues at Pacific Union College whose generosity provided me with a quarter off from my teaching duties to finally finish writing my dissertation; special thanks to Amy Rosenthal, Paul McGraw, Ileana Douglas, and Sara Kakazu for their constant enthusiasm for my project and faith that I would get it done. I iii am grateful for the support of the good friends I met in graduate school, especially Cheris Brewer Current, Robin Payne, Christina Balam, Amanda Van Lanen, Amy Canfield, and Katy Fry. My family—old and new—has patiently endured many a conversation about the atomic bombing in history and memory, even when I am sure they could think of many other things they would rather discuss. Thank you to my parents for maintaining confidence that I would indeed finish this project and for never wavering in their encouragement. My grandfather, Elmo Jesse Enzor, passed away in 2007 while I was in Tokyo for a research fellowship; he had visited Tokyo as a navy sailor in the first weeks of September 1945. I grew up listening to his memories of war in the Pacific; it is impossible for me to think of the Occupation without wondering what he witnessed in those early weeks after the war’s end. I am certain that our opinions on the war and its aftermath diverged, but I am also certain that he would be proud of this dissertation nonetheless. Finally, thank you to my husband, who married me this year despite my omnipresent dissertation and the clutter of books, drafts, note-cards and angst it left in its wake. His enthusiasm for this project revitalized my own many times; his willingness to read drafts again and again made this lonely project seem like a partnership; and his reassurances that there really would be a light at the end of this tunnel seem to have come true. iv “DIVINE” INTERVENTION: JAPANESE AND AMERICAN CHRISTIAN NARRATIVES OF THE PACIFIC WAR, THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS, AND THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION Abstract by Hilary E. L. Elmendorf, Ph.D. Washington State University May 2011 Chair: Noriko Kawamura In 1995, American public opinion rallied around the sacrosanct “Good War” and its atomic culmination above Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum contemplated an inclusion of the Japanese victims of atomic warfare in an exhibit planned for the fiftieth anniversary of the Pacific War’s end, the intense public furor against the purportedly revisionist undermining of the “American Century’s” greatest triumph extirpated the Enola Gay from any consideration of the bomb’s enduring civilian toll. In short, fifty years after the dual incinerations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed that the same American consensus supporting the righteousness of the atomic bombs still existed, as it had since 1945. This dissertation seeks a re-examination of American and Japanese memories of atomic warfare, grounded in the dissent that appeared as early as August 1945. By returning to the years of Japan’s Occupation, from 1945-1952, we can trace the counter- narratives of atomic tragedy that emerged from Japanese and American Christians, v questioning not only national celebrations of the just nature of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s destruction, but also national adherence to the long-held identity as an exceptional Christian democracy. Immediate opposition to the use of the atomic bomb to end war in the Pacific, particularly from vocal Christian activists, revealed the lack of any national consensus that shadowed nuclear war from its birth and that complicated the memory of World War II as the “Good War” in America’s past. Confirmed by the victory of war, the United States embarked on a new Christianizing mission in Occupied Japan that extended the boundaries of American democracy, in the Cold War’s fight against communism, across the globe. As General Douglas MacArthur fostered democracy in recently militaristic Japan, he called on Christian missionaries to assist the American transformation of its former enemy. Among the Christians to respond to MacArthur’s call were those, such as many of the founders of International Christian University, who based their active commitment to improving Japan on their desire to apologize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki; this dissent disappeared from American collective memory as the Cold War bolstered support for nuclear arsenals. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ..............................................................................................................................iii ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................................1 CHAPTERS 1. “ONLY THE COLOR OF THE SEA REMAINED UNCHANGED”: POPULAR AND ACADEMIC NARRATIVES OF THE ATOMIC BOMB......................................................12 MEMORY, GUILT, AND THE POLITICS OF PLACE: JAPAN’S RECKONING WITH THE WAR IN ASIA..............................................................................................17 “THE BOMB EXPLOSION THAT SO JARRED THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE”: AMERICANS REVISIT HIROSHIMA ...........................................................................32 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................57 2. “DIVINE” INTERVENTION: AMERICAN RELIGIOUS NARRATIVES OF THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS AND THE END OF THE PACIFIC WAR.......................................60 “REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR—KEEP ’EM DYING”: THE ATOMIC BOMB AS RETRIBUTION ................................................................................................................64 RELIGION AND THE “ENEMY”: SUB-HUMANS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE PACIFIC............................................................................................................................66 COLLECTIVE SIN: THE “GOOD WAR’S” CATACLYSMIC END ...........................72 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................88 3. MANIFEST DESTINY IN CENSORED PRINT: JAPAN EXAMINES THE ATOMIC BOMB ......................................................................................................................................93 “YOU ARE THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE AND THE OPPOSITE OF US”: PROPAGANDA AND THE WAR’S END......................................................95 DEMONSTRATING “A RIGHT TO A PLACE AMONG CIVILIZED NATIONS”: AMERICA’S BOMB IN OCCUPIED JAPAN’S PRINT ..............................................114 CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................132 4. LAMBS FOR THE SLAUGHTER: JAPAN’S CHRISTIANS INTERPRET THE ATOMIC BOMB ....................................................................................................................................134 FAITH AND THE BOMBED: RELIGION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY AT THE WAR’S END...................................................................................................................137
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