Vortrag von Prof. M. G. Sheftall, PhD: „Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses“

Der Vortrag findet im Rahmen der Sonderausstellung „Vom Inferno zum Friedenssymbol- 80 Jahre Hiroshima und Nagasaki“ im Museum Fünf Kontinente (4. Juli 2025 bis 11. Januar 2026) statt. Es handelt sich um die Wanderausstellung der Friedensgedächtnismuseen in Hiroshima und Nagasaki.

“Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses”

Prof. M.G. Sheftall, PhD (Shizuoka University)

23. Oktober 2025: 18:00 Uhr

Ort: Museum Fünf Kontinente, Maximilianstraße 42, 80538 München 

Eintritt frei. Eine vorherige Anmeldung ist nicht erforderlich. 

Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses and it Embers series companion volume — Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses – are the result of nine years of personal interviews with Japanese, Korean, and Chinese Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, onsite fieldwork, and both Japanese and American archival research by M.G. Sheftall, a cultural historian at Shizuoka University, a campus of the Japanese national university system.

In his research, M. G. Sheftall layers the stories of hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors—in harrowing detail, to give a minute-by-minute report of August 6, 1945, in the leadup and aftermath of the world-changing bombing mission of Paul Tibbets, Enola Gay, and Little Boy. These survivors and witnesses, who now have an average age over ninety years old, are quite literally the last people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the bombings, tell us what they experienced on the day those cities were obliterated, and give us some appreciation of what it has entailed to live with those memories and scars during the subsequent seventy-plus years.

With the post-World War II global order now in disarray, toxic nationalism once again on the march, and liberal democracy in seemingly full retreat around the world, these hibakusha accounts should be required reading for the modern age, as they can serve as cautionary tales about the horror and insanity of nuclear warfare, reminding us—it is hoped—that the world still lives with this danger at our doorstep. But the stories these hibakusha have shared with Sheftall also stand as testaments to the incredible resilience of the human spirit in the face of unfathomable horror, suffering, and destruction.

M.G. Sheftall is a professor of modern Japanese cultural history and communication at Shizuoka University. His research focuses on the modern evolution of Japanese national identity, with particular emphasis on WWII and the lingering effects of that conflict at both collective and individual levels of Japanese consciousness. In addition to his teaching duties, he has been a research fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto (2012-2013), a visiting curator at WWII-related museums in Japan and the United States, and a technical consultant and commentator for numerous historical documentaries in both Western and Japanese media. His best-known works to date include: Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (2005), based on interviews with survivors of Japan’s 1944-1945 kamikaze program; Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses (2024); and its companion volume, the upcoming Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses (2025), based on interviews with survivors of the atomic bombings of those two cities in 1945. He has lived and worked in Japan continuously since 1987.

Eine Kooperation von LMU Japan-Zentrum und Museum Fünf Kontinente.