The Radiance of a Thousand Suns: The Hiroshima Project

Radiance presents the events, persons, and deeds involved in the making and first use of the atomic bomb. From the actual experiences of those involved, three separate stories are woven into a seamless fabric. The central narrative follows the lifework of a physicist from the time he leaves graduate school to work with Dr. Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, to the time he visits Hiroshima to see for himself the devastating effects of his work. A second follows the lifelong friendship of two women, one Scottish and one Japanese, from their childhood in Japan until they are reunited long after the war. The third focuses on a Japanese minister and the hibakusha (those exposed to the radiation of the bomb) to whom he devotes his life. All three culminate in the controversy over the Smithsonian's plan to exhibit the Enola Gay (the airplane used to drop the bomb). Radiance provokes us into considering the ways in which history is made, remembered and forgotten, highlighting how difficult and yet how necessary it is to discuss the issues involved in the birth of the nuclear age and our own responsibilities for the good and the evil thereof. Preface by Martin Harwit, former director of the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian.