My Image

Is Hiroshima Still Radioactive? Nuclear Explosions & the Environment

by Bo

I'll be giving a lecture titled, "Is Hiroshima Still Radioactive? Nuclear Explosions & the Environment" in Dublin on Tuesday February 20th at 17:00. The lecture is sponsored by University College Dublin Japan Group and the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. The talk is in coordination with an exhibition of posters from the Hiroshima Peace Museum that will be exhibited at the Belfield Campus of UCD until March 4.Details, and a link to register can be found

Tags: Global Hibakusha Hiroshima & Nagasaki Radiation Fallout
Read More

Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad: Animals Return to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

by Bo

I've just published a short article at Arcadia, an online journal at the Environment and Society Portal of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, a joint initiative of LMU Munich and the Deutsches Museum.The article examines the discourse around large mammals being seen in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), especially in the heavily contaminated Red Forest area. When the mammals are wolves, foxes, or other non-human animals, invariably the discourse is foregrounding the

Tags: Chernobyl Radiation Fallout
Read More

When is a Nuclear Test Actually an Attack? Cold War Nuclear Testing and Downwind Fallout Clouds

by Bo

I was unable to attend the SHOT conference in New Orleans last week, and so I sent in my presentation via Vimeo. I'm posting it here for anyone who wants to see it.The title is, "When is a nuclear test actually an attack: Cold War nuclear testing and downwind fallout clouds." I argue that radioactive fallout from nuclear detonations, especially of thermonuclear weapons (H-bombs) was strategized as a means of attacking enemy combatants and populations in imagined #nuclear war scenarios, but when

Tags: Nuclear Testing Fallout Cold War
Read More

Allied Troops Prepared for Radiological Warfare on D-Day

by Bo

Long before the completion of a working nuclear weapon by the United States at the end of World War Two, the United States contemplated the use of radioactive materials in warfare.From my book Nuclear Bodies:In a meeting of the Subcommittee of the S-1 Executive Committee (formerly the Uranium Committee of the US government’s Office of Scientific Research and Development) in October 1943, several of the top scientists overseeing the Manhattan Project considered methods of weaponizing radioactive

Tags: Radiation Radiological Warfare Fallout Hibakusha
Read More

"Nuclear Memory Effects: Remembering Hiroshima and Forgetting Fukushima," Keynote Lecture for the Troubling Anniversaries Conference

by Bo

I was honored to be asked to present the keynote lecture at the Troubling Anniversaries Conference held in October 2021 jointly by the Institute for Historical Research of the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, and the Center for Public History at Queen's University Belfast. The conference brought together a fascinating cross-section of scholars and practitioners. All of the sessions are available online and can be seen here. My keynote lecture explored memory culture in

Tags: Fukushima Hiroshima & Nagasaki Global Hibakusha Nuclear Testing Nuclear Weapons Fallout
Read More

Not Seeing the Contaminated Forest for the Decontaminated Trees in Fukushima

by Bo

I have a new article up at Japan Focus. The article is part of a group of articles promoting the book, Legacies of Fukushima: 3.11 in Context, published this summer by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The article is a short presentation of the content of my chapter of the book, and the other articles in the Japan Focus collection present several chapters by other contributors. My work focuses on it has been so hard historically to see the harm done to people who's exposure to radioactivity

Tags: Fukushima Nuclear Waste Fallout
Read More

How Internal Exposures to Radiation Make People Invisible: Video

by Bo

I was honored to be invited to give a lecture in the "Night with the Experts" series of the Nuclear Education Information Services (NEIS) group based in Chicago (my hometown). The title of my talk is, "How Internal Exposures to Radiation Make People Invisible." There are several parts to the lecture:-The effects of nuclear weapons-How internal and external exposures to radiation are experienced differently and affect people differently-External exposures affect our whole bodies-Internal

Tags: Fallout Fukushima Radiation Chernobyl Nuclear Power Nuclear Testing Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Production
Read More

Nuclear Colonialism: Selecting the Irradiated, video of online lecture

by Bo

On October 28, 2020, I presented an online lecture at Whitman College in their 2020 series on the academic theme of Race, Violence, and Health. The lecture was titled "Nuclear Colonialism: Selecting the Irradiated." In the talk I survey the selection of atmospheric nuclear test sites by the first five nuclear weapon states. These test sites were invariably located nearby to populations that lacked the political ability to stop the effort. Often these sites were in colonial or postcolonial

Tags: Nuclear Testing Fallout Radiation Cold War Hibakusha Nuclear
Read More

Managing Nuclear Memory: The Journey from Hiroshima to Fukushima

by Bo

Webinar!I will be in dialogue with scholars Norma Field and Yuki Miyamoto for an online discussion that you can join via Zoom next weekend, in part commemorating the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also exploring the public management of nuclear understandings since then, especially as relates to Fukushima, and the Global Hibakusha.Time:August 7 (Fri) 11 am (EDT) East Coast USAAugust 7 (Fri) 10 am (CDT) Central USAAugust 7 (Fri) 8 am (PDT) West Coast USAAugust 7 (Fri) 5 pm (CET)

Tags: Hiroshima & Nagasaki Fukushima Nuclear Testing Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Power Nuclear Waste Radiation Fallout Hanford
Read More

My interview for the Atomic Heritage Foundation

by Bo

Cindy Kelly, the founder of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, visited to Hiroshima, Nagasaki and other cities in Japan earlier this year. I had the pleasure of meeting up with Cindy and having a long chat at Kissui, the kaiseki restaurant in the Sunroute Hotel in Hiroshima, overlooking the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park. Here is the interview:The interview is up on the AHF webpage and includes a transcript. You can find it here. Here I am with Cindy across from the Peace

Tags: Hibakusha Hiroshima & Nagasaki Nuclear Testing Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Production Hanford Radiation Fallout
Read More

Global Hibakusha on Twitter

© 2018 Bo Jacobs Contact Me