¹ Official provisional translation of the Japanese; text taken from “Address by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at the Hiroshima Memorial Service for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony.” link (accessed August 20, 2011).

² John Dower, “The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory,” Diplomatic History 19:2 (1995), 279-81.

³ Olwen Beazley, “Politics and Power: the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome) as World Heritage,” in Sophia Labadi and Colin Long, eds., Heritage and Globalisation (New York: Routledge: 2010), 60-64; Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999).

⁴ However, texts on the science around the bomb made it out to press relatively easily. High school and university students, between 1946 and 1949, could consult a new series of books and manuals on topics such as quantum mechanics and theoretical nuclear physics, including translations of Western textbooks. See the Guide to the Gordon W. Prange education book collection, the University of Maryland Libraries: occupation-period censored education books 1945-1949, eds. Akemi Noda and Eiko Sakaguchi (Tokyo: Bunsei Shoin, 2007), 272-80. For a detailed study of Nagai Takashi's influence see Chad Diehl, Japan's Postwar Hagiography: Atomic- Bombing Author Nagai Takashi and Occupation Censorship (M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 2005).

⁵ Nagai Takashi, The Bells of Nagasaki, trans. William Johnston (New York: Kodansha International, 1984).

⁶ Hiro Saito, “Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima as National Trauma,” Sociological Theory 24:4 (2006), 353-376.

⁷ The laws are officially called the Hiroshima heiwa kinen toshi kensetsu ho (広島平和記念都 市建設法) and the Nagasaki kokusai bunka toshi kensetsu ho (長崎国際文化都市建設法) The Japanese text of both laws is available online through the e-Gov website of Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. “Hiroshima heiwa kinen toshi kensetsu hō,” link; “Nagasaki kokusai bunka toshi kensetsu ho,” link (accessed October 01, 2011). An English translation of the Hiroshima law is included in Teramitsu Tadashi, et al., Hiroshima heiwa kinen toshi kensetsu hō no seitei no tōji o furikaette - kankeisha ni yoru zadankai (Hiroshima: Kobunshokan, 1987).

⁸ The line “thrice victimized by nuclear bombs” appeared in virtually every petition against nuclear weapons. Nagasaki poet Yamada Kan described Bikini as a “third death” in the shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yamada Kan, “Mitabi no shi,” Kioku no koshū (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Bunkensha, 1969), 22.

⁹ Chūgoku Shinbun, ed., Nenpyō Hiroshima: kaku jidai 50-nen no kiroku (Hiroshima: Chūgoku Shinbunsha, 1995); Chūgoku Shinbun and Hiroshima International Cultural Foundation, eds., The Meaning of Survival: Hiroshima's 36 year commitment to peace (Hiroshima: The Chūgoku Shinbun and the Hiroshima International Cultural Foundation, 1983).

¹⁰ Church officials claim that about 8,500 Catholics in the vicinity of the hypocenter perished. Catholic Archdiocese of Nagasaki, “Seikatsu no naka no kyokai: Urakami kyokai,” link (accessed August 21, 2011).

¹¹ Nagai, Bells, 107.

¹² Mikiso Hane, Premodern Japan: a historical survey (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 123-8; Urakawa Wasaburo, Urakami Kirishitan shi (Ōsaka: Zenkoku Shobo,1943).

¹³ Author's personal interview with Hirose Masahito, Nagasaki hibakusha and activist (August 11, 2008).

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ See for instance the review by journalist Tagawa Taisuke, “Nagai Takashi: Nagasaki no Kane,” link (accessed August 20, 2011). On the Vatican's silence on the atomic bombings, see Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., “The Cross and the Bomb: Two Catholic Dramas in Response to Nagasaki,” The Journal of Religion and Theatre, 1:1 (Fall 2002), 103-5.

¹⁶ George Washington University has a valuable collection of documents recording such viewpoints, scanned from the holdings of the U.S. National Security Archives. Tinian Files, “Cable CAX 51948 from Commander in Chief Army Forces Pacific Advance Yokohoma Japan to Commander in Chief Army Forces Pacific Administration, September 14, 1945.” link (accessed August 21, 2011).

¹⁷ United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1946). Available here. (accessed September 21, 2011)

¹⁸ A more literal translation would be “Hiroshima of rage, Nagasaki of prayer,” but I have elected to use this more graceful translation by John W. Treat, Writing ground zero: Japanese literature and the atomic bomb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 301.

¹⁹ One indicator of the phrase's place in popular discourse is the existence of a page dedicated to explaining it n the Japanese version of Wikipedia. See the entry for “Ikari no Hiroshima, inori no Nagasaki,” link (accessed August 30, 2011).

²⁰ “Tale of Two Cities,” TIME (Friday, May 18, 1962). Available here. (Accessed September 18, 2011).

²¹ Author's personal interview with Ubuki Satoru, Hiroshima resident and scholar (August 26, 2008).

²² Chūgoku Shinbun, The Meaning of Survival; Nagasaki Sōgō Kagaku Daigaku Heiwa Bunka Kenkyujo [NKSD], ed., Nagasaki - 1945-nen 8- gatsu 9-ka (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995).

²³ Detailed statistics on the populations of each city can be found on their respective government websites. For Hiroshima City, consult the Hiroshima-shi tōkei sho, link, files B-1-1 and B-1-2 (accessed January 21, 2011); For Nagasaki City, see the Nagasaki-shi no jinko, link (accessed August 21, 2011).

²⁴ Norman MacAfee, “What Began in Hiroshima Must End in Fukushima,” The Huffington Post. Available here. [Accessed August 22, 2011].

²⁵ Dower, “The Bombed,” 279-81.

²⁶ Ann Sherif, Japan's Cold War: Media, Literature and the Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009) 51-2.

²⁷ Dower, “The Bombed,” 280.

²⁸ Taketani, an admirer of the Soviet Union, may also have had political motivations for expressing this opinion. A 1948 article in the magazine Sekai carried his praise for Soviet nuclear technology. Around the same time, the Japan Communist Party asserted that Soviet possession of nuclear power formed an important deterrent to monopoly capitalism. In the 1950s, Taketani took back his words and pointed to various obstacles to nuclear power in Japan. Moreover, in 1975 he established a grassroots Nuclear Information Center (Genshiryoku shiryō jōhōshitsu), which facilitated the activities of Japanese antinuclear power movements. I am grateful to the independent scholar Onitsuka Hiroshi for sharing these observations. Taketani Mitsuo, Kagaku tetsugaku geijutsu (Tokyo: Soryusha, 1949), 24-5.

²⁹ Morris Low, Science and the Building of a New Japan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 155.

³⁰ The full text of the speech can be found at the official website of the International Atomic Energy Agency. link (accessed September 11, 2011).

³¹ David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: The Agency, 1997).

³² Ryūkichi Imai, “Japan and the Nuclear Age,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (June 1970), 37.

³³ In February 1955 Shōriki was elected to the Lower House of the Japanese Diet and subsequently became the minister who oversaw nuclear energy in the Hatoyama cabinet. The following year he became the founding director of a new organization, the Science and Technology Agency (which vigorously promoted nuclear energy) and worked closely with other pro-nuclear politicians including Nakasone Yasuhiro. Tanaka and Kuznick, “Japan, the Atomic bomb, and the ‘Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Power.”

³⁴ Yuki Tanaka and Peter Kuznick, “Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and the “Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Power”,” The Asia-Pacific Journal. Available here. [Accessed September 01, 2011].

³⁵ Taketani Mitsuo, “Nihon no genshiryoku kenkyū no hōkō,” Kaizo 11 zokan (1952), 70-72.

³⁶ Martin Dusenberre and Daniel Aldrich, “Hatoko Comes Home: Civil Society and Nuclear Power in Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies 70:3 (2011), 6.

³⁷ The Atomic Energy Basic Law of 1955 strictly limited the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes under those three principles. Industry-government collusion, however, prevented principles of openness from being observed in the nuclear development program. In 1959, for instance, the Science and Technology Agency (Kagaku gijutsu-chō) concealed a report which found that the costs of an accident at the first nuclear power plant in Japan (in Tokai Village, Ibaraki Prefecture) would be more than double the national budget for that year. Onitsuka Hiroshi, “X-Rayed from Fukushima Daiichi: Japanese Nuclear Power Plants and Local Governments,” unpublished paper.

³⁸ Beazley, “Politics and Power.”

³⁹ Dower, “The Bombed,” 283-4.