Ruins of Memory

This chapter highlights the concerns of some groups in Nagasaki on how to treat the ruins of the atomic past. It focuses on the Urakami Cathedral ruins which loomed large in discussions of reconstruction and urban identity through the late 1950s. The chapter looks at how the ruins linked the past to the present, but, in the case of a destructive event, also ensnared the present in a contested past. For activist groups, hibakusha, and other city residents, the ruins became the center of the commemoration of the bombing and a popular symbol within their atomic narrative, providing a shorthand reference for the human trauma of the bombing. The chapter also analyses Nagasaki's approach to modernizing its landscape and Hiroshima's approach to stay frozen in the traumatic, atomic moment. Ultimately, the chapter investigates how Hiroshima cultivated a milieu de mémoire (real environment of memory) in the first decades after the bombings, whereas Nagasaki failed to preserve its only lieu de mémoire (site of memory).