Dropping the Bomb

Post date: Feb 16, 2013 3:33:19 PM

The year 1995 marked the 50th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One book publication that commemorated this anniversary was Jiro Nakano’s Outcry from the Inferno, a moving anthology of 100 tanka poems written by bombing survivors. I wrote a review of this book at the end of 1995, and have just added it to the Reviews page. I’m not sure that this review was ever published, however, as I have no record of publication. Also included with the review is an extensive new postscript that explores the ethics and strategy of dropping “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” on the two Japanese cities.