US professor focuses on less-studied Nagasaki in teaching A-bomb history

Students enrolling in James Nolan's "Remembering Nagasaki" course at Williams College typically possess minimal prior knowledge about the Japanese city or its atomic bombing that occurred on August 9, 1945. Nolan, a sociology professor, notes that their awareness of the coastal city on Japan's southwestern main island of Kyushu is often confined to the few World War II-related details they encountered in high school.

Their primary exposure usually consists of a single image of the mushroom cloud found in their high school history textbook.

Nolan's interdisciplinary course, first introduced in 2025, delves into historical narratives from and about Nagasaki, spanning from the 16th century until the bombing and its aftermath. A second course, "Going Nuclear: American Culture in the Atomic Age," explores the development of nuclear technology from the Manhattan Project to the present day.

Nolan's grandfather, a radiology and obstetrics-gynecology specialist, worked on the Manhattan Project and participated in some of the earliest nuclear bomb detonations. His grandfather's contributions included safety and evacuation planning for the Trinity test site in New Mexico, as detailed in James Nolan's book "Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age."

Nolan's grandfather visited the Pacific region with the radioactive core of the "Little Boy" bomb that the United States ultimately dropped on Hiroshima after the war. He conducted military-led medical investigations in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki to study the aftermath of the bombings. During his research visits, Nolan found Nagasaki particularly intriguing due to its unique identity as an international port city and its historical role as the center of Christianity in Japan.

The course commences with the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which transpired precisely three days after Hiroshima, located roughly 300 kilometers northeast in Honshu.

Nolan examines the dominant narratives that emerged in Nagasaki, Japan as a whole, and the United States regarding the bombing. The course then takes students back to 16th-century Nagasaki to explore the city's development as a trading hub, the influence of Christianity, and its relations with Western countries. The phrase "Nagasaki prays, Hiroshima rages" serves as an entry point to discuss the divergent responses of the two cities to the catastrophic nuclear attacks.

Nolan emphasizes that by 1945, Christian communities in Nagasaki had already endured centuries of religious persecution. Starting in the 16th century, local authorities engaged in a brutal campaign of torture and executions to suppress Christianity, with the remaining believers persevering through their faith. Urakami, a Christian stronghold in Nagasaki, bore the brunt of the explosion caused by the plutonium-based "Fat Man" atomic bomb, and Urakami Cathedral suffered significant damage.

Despite being the target of the second atomic bombing, Nagasaki remains relatively underrepresented in scholarly discussions, with Hiroshima often being the sole city mentioned. Nolan argues that Nagasaki is the city that is frequently overlooked. He attributes this tendency to forget Nagasaki, in part, to the bombing occurring just days after Hiroshima.

However, he also notes that the city's significance as a military target and its unique history as a Christian hub in Japan weakened claims that the bombing was either necessary or justified. By immersing students in firsthand accounts of the bombing's effects on Nagasaki, Nolan aims to counteract the tendency to discuss the events at a distance, thereby fostering a deeper understanding of the city's suffering and the long-term consequences of radiation.

Nolan assigns texts such as Susan Southard's "Nagasaki," a non-fiction account of Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, and Takashi Nagai's "The Bells of Nagasaki," which conveys first-person perspectives of the bombing and its aftermath. Through his scholarship and teaching, Nolan scrutinizes the various narratives that emerged following the bombing, as well as the United States' subsequent handling of responsibility and its impact on public memory.