This week, we will be focusing on the casualties of the nuclear age. As we will discuss, there are many more victims beyond those who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some of the readings, like John Hersey's Hiroshima and the extracts from Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are victims' first-hand accounts. Others, such as the reading from Arjun Makhijani and Stephen Schwartz, are more factually-based studies.

We are covering a fair bit of ground in this class, so there are quite a few readings. Many of them, though, are short articles. And I will warn you right up front that some of the readings are disturbing; but they are also important.

To begin with, we will be reading John Hersey's important account of the survivors of Hiroshima. Originally appearing as a series of essays in the New Yorker in 1946, this book was the first widely-read account of the human effects of the atomic bombings. We will also read some accounts of the bombings from Japanese children.

We will then discuss other victims, including so-called "downwinders," armed forces personnel who participated in various aspects of nuclear testing, uranium miners, the Marshall Islanders, and even the approximately 23,000 people (mostly Americans) who were subjected to radiation experiments between the 1940s and the 1970s. The readings for these consist mostly of a series of short articles.

Finally, we will read a recent National Geographic article discussing some of the environmental costs and the problems of dealing with nuclear waste.

There is no reaction paper question, as such. Rather, I want you simply to react to the readings. The readings should raise their own questions for you, but some ideas you might think about, for instance, are: What did you find new or surprising (and why you hadn't heard it before)? Have any of these readings changed the way you think about nuclear weapons? How should the costs of nuclear weapons be reconciled with the gains (or can they even be reconciled?)? How should the story of the casualties of the nuclear age be told in history (eg. How much weight does this part of the story deserve?)?

You should be prepared to talk in detail about all of these readings in class. As you can see, there are a number of readings, but most are short articles.

Research Exercise: I would like each of you to do a search on ProQuest Historical Newspapers to find two articles related to the human legacy of nuclear weapons. I want you to find two you're interested in, print them out, and bring it to class. There are two sample ones below--a search will turn up many more. It can be from any date after Hiroshima and on anything substantively to do with casualties of the nuclear age. (NB: Do not simply copy articles from a friend--we will be going around the class, so I'd like everyone to have something different to share.)

If you're trying to access Proquest or other Virgo databases or online journals, you will most likely need to set your computer for off-Grounds access. Details are at: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/databases/offgrounds.html. Alternatively, there should be no problem accessing from a computer on-Grounds.

• John Hersey, Hiroshima (class text)
• Extracts from Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Makhijani and Schwartz, "Victims of the Bomb"
• James Glanz, "Almost All in US Have been Exposed to Fallout, Study Finds"
• Washington Post, May 12, 2007, "Thousands of Nuclear Arms Workers See Their Cancer Claims Denied or Delayed"
• New York Times, March 24, 2009, "France to Pay Nuclear Test Victims"

Removed:

• Bengt Danielson, "Poisoned Pacific: The Legacy of French Nuclear Testing"
• Michael Flynn, "A Debt Long Overdue"
• Robert Alvarez, "Making it Work"
• Arjun Makhijani, "The Burden of Proof"
• Colin Woodard, "Payback Time: Marshall Islands"
• Bill Mintutaglio, "Boley Caldwell Wants an Apology"
• Colin Woodard, "Marshall Islands: You Can't Go Home Again"
• Johnathan M. Weisgall, "Time to End the 40-year Lie"