The monster is the physical incarnation of the nuclear threat. I’ve traced this nuclear narrative in Japanese popular culture back to the original Godzilla (1954), in which a radioactive monster rises from the sea and destroys Tokyo. Renderings of utter devastation clearly borrow from the nuclear aftermath, as well. Not only is the repeated theme of city-wide destruction striking, so too are the visuals.
In the classic 1995 anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, re-released on Netflix last month, a series of “angels” arrive, each threatening to destroy the city of Tokyo-3. This culminates with the villain Pain completely wiping out the village from above, a clear parallel to the detonation of the bomb Little Boy over Hiroshima. In Naruto, a popular and long-running manga/anime about a young ninja, the titular character’s home village faces repeated threats of destruction. The influence of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings regularly turns up in storylines about cities, towns, and villages being obliterated. I first noticed the phenomenon of cultural memory in anime and manga, Japanese animation and comic books. Even if a child born today might never know D-Day or the names of Allied generals, they’ll have some gut-level understanding of “storming the beach,” or they’ll grapple with America’s self-image, which evolved in the aftermath of WWII. This indirect, possibly unnoticed influence is what I mean by cultural memory. These images and narratives were so prominent for so long, they continue to influence people who have no direct connection to them. I suspect far more people would recognize the photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima than would remember the name of that particular island or details of the Pacific campaign. Instead, I’m fascinated by the way cultural memory persists even when specifics of the history being remembered are lost. What interests me, though, is not this act of forgetting. A child born today could conceivably never meet someone old enough to remember the events of 1945. Whether we like it or not, this is where the history of WWII is heading. We can’t remember everything, so we focus on more recent and pressing concerns. Most people don’t deem a very old war to be worthy of detailed remembrance. For example, I couldn’t tell you much of anything about the Wars of the Roses, and hardly anyone would fault me for that. Time always serves to diminish the importance of historical events.
I don’t consider this type of forgetting to be a problem, though. What was one of the most important events of the 20 th century is turning into a footnote in an ever-shrinking chapter on WWII.
Kids in school today-not to mention many adults-may know little of the bloody battle being commemorated, if they know it at all. The number of living people who were adults, or near-adults, during WWII dwindles daily, but the big events of the war continue to inform Americans’ view of their place in the world order.Īlongside celebrations of the D-Day anniversary, however, I also heard a repeated complaint: D-Day is being forgotten. Last month, D-Day was remembered on its 75 th anniversary. On the 50 th anniversary of the moon landing, this cultural memory bears examining, as well as how cultural memory works in general. However, the imagery and influence of the space race continues to thrive, even among people with no firsthand memory of the events. I suspect that there are many current high schoolers who wouldn’t be able to recall Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin’s names. Apollo lasts because cultural memory is at play, by which I mean the type of unspecific memory that makes an event part of a culture without necessarily preserving the details. But the images and narratives of the event remain with us today, at least in indirect form. According to NASA, approximately 650 million people watched the Apollo 11 Moon landing on TV.