The Wilmington College Peace Resource Center’s 50th anniversary commemorative exhibition, “Memorializing the Hibakusha Experience,” is devoted to the aftermath of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The exhibit, which runs through Dec. 5, is featured in the Harcum Art Gallery and Meriam R. Hare Quaker Heritage Center in WC’s Boyd Cultural Arts Center.
Curated by Dr. Claude Baillargeon, professor of art history, Oakland University, the exhibition features works from the original Hiroshima and Nagasaki Memorial Collection of the Barbara Reynolds Memorial Archives at WC.
To underscore how the past continues to shape the present, the exhibition also includes four contemporary artists, Kei Ito, Katy McCormick, Migiwa Orimo and elin o’Hara slavick, “whose humanistic works favor alternate modes of representation to create a dialogue with the historical documentary photography from the PRC archives, while retaining the urge to memorialize the hibakusha experience,” said Dr. Tanya Maus, director of the PRC and QHC.
According to Baillargeon, “This is the first time many historically rare photographs and archival materials have been exhibited from the PRC’s collection. Part of what makes the exhibition unique is how the contemporary and historical works engage in a dialogue about the toll of weapons of mass destruction and the need to abolish them.”
The Peace Resource Center was established in 1975 by Quaker nuclear abolitionist Barbara L. Reynolds (1915-1990) to house and preserve the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Memorial Collection. It is the only archives and academic center in the United States devoted to the human experience of nuclear war through the atomic bombings. Mainly comprised of material of Japanese origin, this significant collection of photographs, publications, artifacts and documents testifies to the nuclear experience from the perspective of the only people targeted in warfare by radioactive weapons.
This unparalleled collection was assembled throughout the 1960s and 70s by those in Japan and the United States who supported Reynold’s advocacy, which strove to eradicate nuclear arms by shining a light on the plight of the hibakusha, the explosion-affected persons who survived the atom bombs. Reynolds, who initially lived in Hiroshima in the early 1950s before circumnavigating the globe with her family aboard the yacht Phoenix of Hiroshima, returned to the city in 1960 as a burgeoning antinuclear activist, a role that she steadfastly embraced over the next 10 years.
Several of the most prominent photographers who took an interest in the lives of the hibakusha, once the occupation of Japan by the Allied Powers ended in 1952, are represented in the collection. Foremost among them are Domon Ken, Tomatsu Shōmei and Fukushima Kikujirō, whose published work inspired subsequent generations of image-makers bent on memorializing the hibakusha experience. One senses the influence, for instance, in works by Murasato Sakae and Kurosaki Haruo, leading members of the Nagasaki branch of the Japan Realist Photographers Association. The archive is especially rich in affecting portraits of well-known hibakusha, who posed for the camera in protest against nuclear arms.
Normal gallery hours at the Quaker Heritage Center and Harcum Galleries are weekdays, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and by special appointment arranged by Maus, See the Peace Resource website for more details. 50th/80th Commemorative Events Overview.
PHOTO: Visitors to the exhibit view unique documents and stirring photos surrounding the atomic bombings of Japan in World War II. (photo credit: Claude Baillargeon)