The pictures by hibakusha, he observed, are “more moving than any book of photographs of the horror could be, because what is registered is what has been burned into the minds of the survivors.”
These survivor drawings emphasize memory rather than documentation. Unlike photographs, they represent trauma as it was experienced and remembered, giving emotional access to events that were otherwise too painful or censored to see.
he public had virtually no access to graphic images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki until seven years after the bombs were dropped.
This delayed visibility of human suffering shows how censorship and discomfort shaped public understanding of the bombings. Without images of people, the destruction could be abstracted, making it easier to avoid confronting the human cost.
It involves an issue that has been with us since World War II and was abruptly thrown to the forefront of popular consciousness by 9-11: when, if ever, is it appropriate to identify civilians as a legitimate target of war?
This question pushes the discussion beyond history into ethics. It frames Hiroshima and Nagasaki not just as wartime events but as ongoing moral problems that remain relevant in modern conflicts involving weapons of mass destruction.
Most of this history—this genesis of an awesome, horrifying catch phrase—has been forgotten.
The author suggests that collective memory is selective. While Americans associate Ground Zero with 9/11, its nuclear origins tied to Hiroshima and Nagasaki have faded. This forgetting raises questions about how societies remember violence and which traumas receive sustained attention.
As a place, Ground Zero thus refers to the dead center of an explosive act of violence. As a concept, these ominous words are inseparable from the terrifying vision of WMD—Weapons of Mass Destruction
This passage shows how the meaning of “Ground Zero” has shifted over time. What once referred specifically to nuclear destruction now carries broader associations of mass terror, especially after 9/11. The term itself becomes a symbol shaped by historical memory.