By The Bomb's Early Light Summary

In By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, Paul Boyer argues that in the first few years after American use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the fundamental perceptions which continue to influence our response to the nuclear menace were first articulated, discussed, and absorbed into the living tissue of the culture” (pg. 367). Boyer uses novels, radio broadcasts, popular music, popular periodicals, and polling data in his examination, juxtaposing them against government policy documents to demonstrate the conflict between mass culture and military culture. He writes, “Another surprise as I narrowed my focus to 1945-1950 was the realization of how quickly contemporary observers understood

that a profoundly unsettling new cultural factor had been introduced – that the bomb had transformed not only military strategy and international relations, but the fundamental ground of culture and consciousness” (pg. xix). Boyer concludes, “Unless we recover this lost segment of our cultural history, we cannot fully understand the world in which we live, nor be as well-equipped as we might to change it” (pg. xix).
Boyer’s analysis broadly examines the role of scientists in spreading information about the threat of atomic war, hopes for the future through atomic energy, predictions of the future role of atomic power, the moral debate about nuclear war, and the role of culture.

Describing the immediate aftermath of Hiroshima, Boyer argues, “It would be wrong to conclude that Americans took the bomb casually or that its impact quickly faded. Just below the surface, powerful currents of anxiety and apprehension surged through the culture” (pg. 12). Further, “Physically untouched by the war, the United States at the moment of victory perceived itself as naked and vulnerable. Sole possessors and users of a devastating new instrument of mass destruction, Americans envisioned themselves not as a potential threat to other peoples, but as potential victims” (pg. 14). Scientists entered the public foray during these early years, helping to shape the narrative. Regarding the role of scientist activists, Boyer writes, “Many scientists concluded after August 6, 1945, that it was their urgent duty to try to shape official policy regarding atomic energy…Many of the post-Hiroshima cultural developments…cannot be fully understood without attention to the remarkable public role played by the atomic scientists” (pg. 49). While they did not create fears of annihilation, scientists did act upon them and help inform those public fears. Unfortunately for the scientists, the immediate results of the first

Bikini atoll tests actually dampened peoples’ fears rather than stoke them.
Alongside this debate, Boyer argues that, in the cultural realm, “the bomb…unleashed the first wave of speculation about what would come to be called ‘post-industrial’ society” (pg. 141). To this end, the social sciences worked to fill the gap as “many social scientists in this post-Hiroshima period embraced the view that they possessed knowledge and expertise essential to mankind’s survival” (pg. 169). On the moral end of the equation, Boyer writes, “‘Hiroshima’ and ‘Nagasaki’ stand as signposts marking both a gash in the living flesh of our historical consciousness and a turning point in our ethical history: the concluding events of a ‘good’ war, the opening events of a murky era of moral ambiguity and uncertainty through which we still wander” (pg. 182). Many Americans initially supported the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, believing that it ended the war sooner and saved lives. While the opinion may have waned, Americans largely left the issue unquestioned, and it dropped away from popular culture.
Culturally, Boyer writes, “Apart from a few isolated voices, however, the initial literary response to the atomic bomb was, to say the least, muted” (pg. 246). Many struggled for the right tone or content in the face of such hitherto unseen destruction. Most authors struggle to write about the atomic age but one writer that I have found in particular in his creative writing is that of John Hersey. He came up with a different approach in his article, “Hiroshima”. He focused on the power of the weapon and on the wisdom of using it. In choosing instead to report on individual victims, to follow the unfolding of their lives in minute detail from the moment the bomb fell and as they struggled to exist through the ensuing weeks, Hersey did something altogether different. He bore witness.
Boyer writes, “What was the appropriate aesthetic for the bomb? If an air raid on a small Spanish town could inspire one of Picasso’s greatest canvases, or the individual brutalities of Napoleon’s invasion of Spain Goya’s most powerful work, how was one to respond imaginatively to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, still more, to the prospect of world holocaust?” (pg. 250). Science fiction, however, provided an answer.
The author’s detached style of cultural analysis is consistent throughout the work, but he admits that his interest in the subject is personal. In the book’s introduction, he confesses that he believes that his own consciousness has been shaped acutely by the bomb’s existence. Boyer highlights the fluidity of the public’s collective conscience with keen insight. He pays careful attention to chronology while showing how shifts in public opinion tended to correlate with changes in intellectual advocacy of the One World Government movement. Later, he shows how the public could be even more acutely swayed by the denouncement of this agenda by well-respected establishment politicians. One thing that could be improved in this reading is that Boyer has a neglect in this reading. It is that of the emergence of Abstract Expressionism as a major cultural response to the bomb. This would have added a creative expression to the reaction of the bombing.
My personal response to the argument being made is that the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was justified at the time as being moral – in order to bring about a more rapid victory and prevent the deaths of more Americans. However, it was clearly not moral to use this weapon knowing that it would kill civilians and destroy the urban milieu. And it wasn’t necessary either. As for the second bomb on Nagasaki, that was just as unnecessary as the first one. It was deemed to be needed, partly because it was a different design, and the military (and many civilian scientists) were keen to see if they both worked the same way. There was, in other words, a cynical scientific imperative at work as well.
I should also add that there was a fine line between the atomic bomb and conventional bombing – indeed descriptions of Hamburg or Tokyo after conventional bombing echo the aftermath of Hiroshima. To regard Hiroshima as a moral violation is also to condemn the firebombing campaign, which was deliberately aimed at city centers and completely indiscriminate. Of the Japanese leaders, it was the military ones who held out against the civilian leaders who were closest to the emperor, and who wanted to surrender provided the emperor’s safety would be guaranteed.
The attitude associated with atomic bombs has changed constantly within the past decades. The changes have occurred because different leaders were in office, different situations developed throughout the world, and differences in time period. Attitudes about atomic bombs changed because of the differences in time period in which many things had changed.
An example of the United States' attitude of the atomic bomb in 1945 is found in a statement President Harry Truman issued as a White House press release on August 6 only sixteen hours after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The document explained to the world and Americans alike, the technicality of the atomic bomb, the United States' position on the atomic bomb, and justified the validity of our use of the atomic bomb. He was sure to include details about the sheer, brute power of the bomb, which was unheard of in the present times. For an example of its awesome power, President Truman made a few remarks about the devastation on Japan. He clarified that the war was begun by the Japanese and not by the United States. He then proceeded to offer another chance for the surrender of the Japanese. He said that the United States had won the race to develop an atomic bomb, and that the Germans had failed although they had been trying to produce the same bomb for some time.
This first use of a nuclear weapon by any nation has long divided Americans and Japanese. Americans have consistently approved of this attack and have said it was justified. The Japanese have not. But opinions are changing: Americans are less and less supportive of their use of atomic weapons, and the Japanese are more and more opposed. There is a large generation gap among Americans in attitudes toward the bombings of Hiroshima. Seven-in-ten Americans ages 65 and older say the use of atomic weapons was justified, but only 47% of 18- to 29-year-olds agree.
In the years since WWII, two issues have fueled a debate over America’s use of nuclear weapons against Japan: Did Washington have an alternative to the course it pursued – the bombing of Hiroshima followed by dropping a second atomic weapon on Nagasaki on Aug.

9 – and should the U.S. now apologize for these actions? In September 1945, the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago asked Americans what they would have done if they had been the one to decide whether or not to use the atomic bomb against Japan. At the time, a plurality of Americans supported the course chosen by the Truman administration: 44% said they would have bombed one city at a time, and another 23% would have wiped out cities in general – in other words, two-thirds would have bombed some urban area. Just 26% would have dropped the bomb on locations that had no people. And only 4% would not have used the

bomb.
By 1995, 50 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, support for an alternative to the bombing had grown. Gallup asked Americans whether, had the decision been left up to them, they would have ordered the bombs to be dropped, or tried some other way to force the Japanese to surrender. Half the respondents said they would have tried some other way, while 44% still backed using nuclear weapons.