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PORTSIDE CULTURE

YUKI MIYAMOTO: WAS OPPENHEIMER PRIMARILY A VICTIM OR A VICTIMIZER?  
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Frank T. Fitzgerald
March 5, 2024
Hollywood Progressive
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_ The Oppenheimer film depicted some controversy that erupted at the
lab after scientists heard about the defeat of Germany. Oppenheimer
was adamant about continuing the project. _

J. Robert Oppenheimer, Alfred Eisenstadt

 

Dr. Yuki Miyamoto, Ph.D. is Professor of Religious Studies and
Director of the Humanities Center at DePaul University. She frequently
leads student tours to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and has been appointed a
Nagasaki Peace Correspondent in 2010 and a Hiroshima Peace Ambassador
in 2011. Among her many scholarly publications on nuclear and
environmental ethics are _Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: Commemoration,
Religion, and Responsibility after Hiroshima_
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World Otherwise: Environmental Praxis in Minamata_
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FITZGERALD: Last year, _Oppenheimer _made a big splash at the box
office. In the U.S. alone, it grossed over 325 million dollars. What
did you think of the response to the film?

MIYAMOTO: It was impressive, given the three-hour duration of the
film and the subject matter. I never would have expected a film about
the effort to make the first atomic bomb and the theoretical physicist
who headed up that effort to be so popular. It hyped the youth culture
with a new word—“Barbenheimer”—combining with the title of
another megahit of the summer, Barbie. I appreciated that the film
sparked interest in nuclear weapons among youth and young adults while
rekindling the conversation among others.

FITZGERALD: What are some of the historical facts that you consider
important for younger or less knowledgeable viewers to take away from
the film?

MIYAMOTO: I still encounter students who have learned that the atomic
bombing was in retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor on December
7, 1941. However, the plan of the Manhattan Project had been
conceptualized in the summer of 1941, and the budget had passed
Congress a day before the Pearl Harbor attack. The Nazis had given up
their atomic bomb project in 1942 due to the difficulty of obtaining a
large amount of uranium, as the result of the US having secured the
uranium route in the Belgian Congo. Although the US officially learned
about Germany’s abandonment of the atomic bomb project in late 1944,
other sources suggest that the US had known about the cessation of the
German a-bomb project much earlier. Yet the Los Alamos lab started
operating in 1943.

The film depicted some controversy that erupted at the lab after
scientists heard about the defeat of Germany. Oppenheimer was adamant
about continuing the project. Certainly, he was later shocked by the
scale of destruction at Alamogordo and was agonized over the
devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He opposed furthering the
project to create a hydrogen bomb. However, there is no record of him
opposing the subsequent A-bomb tests in Nevada and elsewhere, totaling
over 900, and that puzzles me.

Taking these depictions into consideration, the film poses important
questions. First, it questions the category of science, which, despite
the intentions of many well-meaning scientists who pursue truth, is
too often involved and even manipulated by the political agenda of the
time. Second, the film addresses scientists' responsibility. What kind
of actions should be taken when scientists invent something akin to a
"weapon of genocide," as referred to in the movie?

_I CANNOT HELP THINKING...IS THIS THE FILM THAT WE NEED THE MOST RIGHT
NOW? IS THIS THE PERSPECTIVE FROM WHICH WE SHOULD LEARN._

FITZGERALD: At its core, _Oppenheimer_ is a biopic that focuses on
the man himself. At the same time, you have reservations about the
film. What are they?

MIYAMOTO: I cannot help thinking...is this the film that we need the
most right now? Is this the perspective from which we should learn.
The film, based upon _American Prometheus_
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Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, describes J. Robert Oppenheimer’s
life, highlights him leading the Manhattan Project to success and his
subsequent persecution by the Red Scare. In one of the climactic
scenes of the film, Oppenheimer, witnessing the power he had
unleashed, murmured, “I am become Death,” though it is unfortunate
that the birth of the weapon of mass destruction was associated with
the Hindu text _Bhagavad Gita_. After being engaged in the project
for a few years, for the first time, he was finally struck by the
reality of what he was doing.

It is important to humanize Oppenheimer, considering his hardships
stemming from antisemitism and the Red Scare, but his suffering is
quite different from that of those who endured the consequences of the
Manhattan Project. The victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki include the
former colonial subjects, Korean victims, political dissidents, and
POWs. Furthermore, I also would include the uranium miners in Belgium
Congo, Canada, and the American West, the 13,000 New Mexicans living
within a 50-mile radius of the Alamogordo test site, a group of girls
camping 37 miles away from the hypocenter, and the Pueblo people who
still struggle against contamination from the Los Alamos laboratory. I
wonder when their suffering will receive attention and medical care,
and when they will become humanized as this film humanizes
Oppenheimer.

FITZGERALD: And I know that for you, Dr. Miyamoto, this is a very
personal reality, one that has directly affected your family.

MIYAMOTO: Yes, my mother was 6 years old and a mile away from the
hypocenter at the time of the Hiroshima bombing. She didn’t tell me
about her experiences, but I witnessed her series of illnesses while I
grew up. She suffered from Ménière's disease in her 30s, received
a “blood booster” shot every other week as she was unable to
produce healthy blood in her 40s, and had cancer in her 50s. She
passed away at the age of 62.

My cousin was the daughter of a Hiroshima bomb sufferer. She also had
an illness of the immune system in her 30s. She was bedridden for
almost 20 years and passed away in her 50s. Many daughters and sons of
the victims have been affected by their parents’ exposure to
radiation.

Hiroshima sufferer Nakazawa Keiji drew on his and others’
experiences of the atomic bombing in a very approachable form of
graphic novel, _Hadashi no Gen_, or the_ __Barefoot Gen_
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which are available in English, he describes the violent nature of the
Japanese military regime, the oppressed colonial subjects from Korea,
and the shortage of food, clothes, and almost all materials that
people need for everyday life. He also recounted the horrors of the
atomic attack--the bodies burned beyond recognition, the decomposed
and swollen bodies floating in the rivers, and the stench that filled
the city. He also wrote about the long-term aftermath of the bombing.
Orphans were used as pawns by the yakuza, the Japanese mafia, the only
people who took them in. People had radiation sickness and died years
after, and others were shunned and discriminated against by the fellow
Japanese citizens because they were “tainted” with radiation.

These are the sufferings that Oppenheimer wasn’t even able to
imagine and that the film fails to include.

FITZGERALD: Given all that you have said about the film, is there
anything further you would like to highlight?

MIYAMOTO: I would like to emphasize that the film accurately depicts
the atomic bomb as a weapon of mass destruction and genocide. It's
crucial that we acknowledge the seriousness of what we are engaging
with here. For example, Zyklon B, used at Auschwitz, is also a tool of
mass destruction that irreversibly altered people's way of life. No
one would produce a movie depicting scientists whose invention led to
such devastation, let alone consume it as entertainment. I hope this
movie will spark a more serious discussion of the consequences of the
invention of the atomic bomb, as people are still suffering from its
effects. We should not simply consume this event of mass destruction
but rather confront its ongoing impact.

 

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FRANK T. FITZGERALD _is a long-time social justice and peace activist
and a retired sociology professor. He has written two books on the
Cuban Revolution and numerous articles on politics and society. In
recent years, he has worked as a non-veteran member of Veterans for
Peace and as a member of the editorial board of the journal Science &
Society. He can be reached at [email protected]_

_The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not
reflect the opinions or beliefs of the Hollywood Progressive._

 

 

 

 

 

* Film
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* 'Oppenheimer'
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* Yuki Miyamoto
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* Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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* Atomic Bomb
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* J. Robert Oppenheimer
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