Japan Hits 'Oppenheimer' Promo

Plus: How the first bomb led to the "nuclear-industrial complex." And reviews by Joe Biden and Oliver Stone.

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including “Hiroshima in America,” “Atomic Cover-up,” and the recent award-winning“The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” He has directed three documentary films since 2021, including two for PBS (plus award-winning “Atomic Cover-up”). He has written widely about the atomic bomb and atomic bombings, and their aftermath, for over forty years.

Today’s headline in The New York Times, while slow in arriving, should not have surprised anyone: ‘Barbenheimer’ Isn’t Funny in Nuclear-Scarred Japan. It seems that for days, “Twitter users in Japan, where nuclear bombings by the U.S. military during World War II killed hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have been spreading the hash tag #NoBarbenheimer.

“And on Monday, the backlash ignited a rare display of internal Hollywood corporate discord, as the Japanese subsidiary of Warner Bros. criticized its headquarters’ handling of social media for the Barbie movie.”

In a letter posted to the official Japan account for “Barbie,” which will be released in Japanese theaters on Aug. 11, the Japan subsidiary lamented its American counterparts’ promotion of Barbenheimer memes as “highly regrettable.”

In one such instance, the official “Barbie” movie account responded to a fan-made image depicting Barbie with an atom bomb bouffant with the comment, “This Ken is a stylist.” In another, it replied with a kissy-face emoji to a movie poster showing Barbie and J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, against the backdrop of a nuclear explosion. “It’s going to be a summer to remember,” the studio’s tweet said.

Some Japanese Twitter users responded with photos of the 1945 bombing victims.

Also related to Japanese views, interesting article here on how the atomic bombings influenced (and was represented in) anime. Here’s one image of the post-bomb landscape—it echoes a scene in my Atomic Cover-up film—but much else is far from realistic.

Back in the USA, two new “reviews” of the movie. President Biden caught it yesterday in Delaware and called it “compelling.” Oliver Stone wrote that he had once turned down directing an Oppenheimer bio-pic because he couldn’t find the thread of the narrative, but found the Nolan film “mind-boggling.”

Meanwhile, longtime nuclear weapons expert Bill Hartung observes in a lengthy article:

“Obviously, all too many of us don’t grasp the stakes involved in a nuclear conflict, thanks in part to “psychic numbing,” a concept regularly invoked by Robert Jay Lifton, author of Hiroshima in America: A History of Denial (co-authored with Greg Mitchell), among many other books. Lifton describes psychic numbing as “a diminished capacity or inclination to feel” prompted by “the completely unprecedented dimension of this revolution in technological destructiveness.”

After mentioning a few issues he wishes the movie covered, he adds:

Another crucially important issue has received almost no attention. Neither the film nor the discussion sparked by it has explored one of the most important reasons for the continued existence of nuclear weapons — the profits it yields the participants in America’s massive nuclear-industrial complex.

Once Oppenheimer and other concerned scientists and policymakers failed to convince the Truman administration to simply close Los Alamos and place nuclear weapons and the materials needed to develop them under international control — the only way, as they saw it, to head off a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union — the drive to expand the nuclear weapons complex was on. Research and production of nuclear warheads and nuclear-armed bombers, missiles, and submarines quickly became a big business, whose beneficiaries have worked doggedly to limit any efforts at the reduction or elimination of nuclear arms.

And concluding:

On the global level, the 2021 entry into force of a nuclear ban treaty — officially known as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons — is a sign of hope, even if the nuclear weapons states have yet to join. The very existence of such a treaty does at least help delegitimize nuclear weaponry. It has even prompted dozens of major financial institutions to stop investing in the nuclear weapons industry, under pressure from campaigns like Don’t Bank on the Bomb.

In truth, the situation couldn’t be simpler: we need to abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us. Hopefully, Oppenheimer will help prepare the ground for progress in that all too essential undertaking, beginning with a frank discussion of what’s now at stake.

On this date in 1945, in my daily Countdown to Hiroshima at my Pressing Issues site (please go take a look to see what transpired in past two weeks):

--Paul Tibbets, pilot of the lead plane, the Enola Gay (named after his mom) on the first mission, reported to Gen. Curtis LeMay’s Air Force headquarters on Guam. LeMay told him the “primary” was still Hiroshima. Bombardier Thomas Ferebee pointed on a map the aiming point a distinctive T-shaped bridge in the center of the city, not the local army base. “It’s the most perfect aiming I’ve seen in the whole damned war,” Tibbets said. But the main idea was to set the bomb off over the center of the city, which rests in kind of a bowl, so that the surrounding hills would supply a “focusing effect” that would lead to added destruction and loss of life in city mainly filled by women and children.

 —Japanese cables and other message intercepted by the United States showed that they were still trying to enlist the Soviets' help in presenting surrender terms--they would even send an envoy--but were undecided on just what to propose. The Russians, meanwhile, were just five days from declaring war on Japan.

--Top U.S. officials were on now centering on allowing the Japanese to keep their emperor when they give up.  In his diary Secretary of War Stimson endorses a key report which concludes: "The retention of the Emperor will probably insure the immediate surrender of all Japanese Forces outside the home islands."  Would offering that win a swift Japanese surrender--without the need to use the bomb?  Not considered.

__