Cognitive Fallout: Psychology and Early Radiation Research in Hiroshima
Speaker: Ran Zwigenberg, Professor of Asian Studies and Jewish Studies, and History, Pennsylvania State University
Moderator: Victor Seow, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
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About the talk: In November 1945, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) moved through Hiroshima in jeeps, seeking eyewitnesses who could describe their experiences of the atomic bombing. The surreal act of deploying a weapon of mass destruction on a city and then walking through it with clipboards, surveying survivors, captured the contradictions at the heart of early Cold War research. Yet this moment’s significance extends beyond November 1945, linking World War II psychological research to later Cold War radiation science. The encounter in Hiroshima reflected the growing scientification of strategic bombing, particularly efforts to measure its effectiveness in shattering civilian morale and breaking the populace’s will to fight via the destruction of their minds. Hiroshima, and other Japanese and German cities, served as a laboratory for assessing psychological impact. At the same time, the surveys marked a critical transition, producing some of the earliest recorded hibakusha testimonies. These interviews also fed into emerging Cold War research agendas, where survivor accounts became tied to the study of radiation effects. As attention shifted to long-term biological and intergenerational consequences, interviews remained central. Crucially, many of the researchers who conducted them were Japanese Americans, tying this history also to wartime incarceration. Their presence linked morale bombing and Cold War science to the experience of internment, embedding these encounters within a broader history of war, race, and knowledge production.
About our speaker: Ran Zwigenberg is Professor of Asian Studies, Jewish Studies, and History at Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on Japanese and European history, with a specialization in memory and intellectual history, He has taught and lectured in the United States, Europe, Israel, and Japan, and published on issues of war memory, atomic energy, psychiatry, heritage, regionalism, and music and politics. Among his publications, Zwigenberg’s first book, Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture(Cambridge University Press, 2014), won the 2016 Association for Asian Studies’ John Whitney Hall book prize. His 2023, Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki(University of Chicago Press), deals with the psychological aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.