Destroyer of Worlds: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Atomic Bomb: Virtual Event

This is a VIRTUAL program. We look forward to seeing you on Zoom.

On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Marking the first and only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, the dropping of these bombs led to Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II. The bombings resulted in the immediate deaths of between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and left lasting physical and psychological scars on those who survived. Historian and author MG Sheftall joins us virtually to explore the aftereffects of the bombings, share the voices of survivors, and examine the ethical and moral considerations surrounding the use of the atomic bomb through expert historical analysis.

About the Speaker

Since 2016, Japan-based cultural historian M.G. Sheftall has been asking hibakusha — survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — to share with him their memories of the worst day of their lives. In the two volumes to arise from this research –  Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses (Dutton, 2024) and Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses (Dutton, 2025) – Sheftall layers the stories of hibakusha in harrowing detail, to give a minute-by-minute account of the leadup, execution, and aftermath of the world-changing atomic bombing missions of 6 August and 9 August 1945. These survivors and witnesses, who now have an average age over ninety years old, are quite literally the last people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the bombings, tell us what they experienced on the day those cities were obliterated, and give us some appreciation of what it has entailed to live with those memories and scars during the subsequent eight decades years.

M.G. Sheftall is a professor of modern Japanese cultural history and communication at Shizuoka University. His research focuses on the modern evolution of Japanese national identity, with particular emphasis on WWII and the lingering effects of that conflict at both collective and individual levels of Japanese consciousness. In addition to his teaching duties, he has been a research fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto (2012-2013), a visiting curator at WWII-related museums in Japan and the United States, and a technical consultant and commentator for numerous historical documentaries in both Western and Japanese media. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (NAL Caliber, 2005), his first major work of Japanese WWII oral history.

He has lived and worked in Japan continuously since 1987.

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Presented in Partnership with the Dallas Holocaust and Humans Rights Museum