The United States government has one motive; protecting America at all cost. The picture above is a reminder that the government will shape things to their liking. That often means making the hardest decisions from dropping atomic bombs to giving drugs to soldiers. Afterwards to lessen the severity the government shapes the story. Media has a bog influence on it and the government has their hand it the mix by censoring things they do not want shared or sending media to project a better America.
In a post- atomic bomb war the US government had a lot of working to do. In D Serlin’s “Reconstructing the Hiroshima Maidens” the US censored pictures of Hiroshima for ten years so that they could build their own narrative. They built one of victims of war leaving out the fact that the US made them victims of war. As the Hiroshima women returned home to get married and work the US had another problem on their hands: Vietnam. In Josh Hochgesang, Tracye Lawyer, Toby Stevenson paper “The Psychological Effects of the Vietnam War” soldiers returning from Vietnam were painted as weak men that had succumbed to alcohol and drugs such as marijuana and heroin and a government that gave itself a year tot deal with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because the signs and symptoms were dormant for that long. In both papers the author(s) highlighted the government as sneaker manipulators that pushed off problems until the media got involved. The Maidens were photographed from beginning to end while the Vietnam war was televised.
The government censors everything that they deem will cause revolts or hurt their image. The Maidens were photographed 10 years after the bombing and that was the first time US citizens had seen the victims of war (Serlin pg.72) . Movies such as Hiroshima and Good Morning Vietnam was produced to make America seem as the protectors of savage lands in all actuality they desisted all with no distinction of soldier, man, women or child. The government believed that not allowing for Hiroshima to be played in theaters would cut down on racism. In a post nuclear world the US had to do everything in it’s power to open Asian markets back up by which racism would not hep the cause. In the Vietnam themed movies the government needed to paint soldiers as heroic and honorable to push the not wanted draft.
While Serlin and Hochgesang, Lawyer, and Stevenson focuses on attacking the government for using peoples to shape the story they wanted their methods are different. Serlin took a story approach with a beginning, middle and end; going form a set point in time April 1955 through 1956 his chronological approach to these historical events helped him display his point clearly. The story had a back story and ended by bring us up to spread with how the government progressed. There was not another way for Serlin to get his point across. Hochgesang, Lawyer, and Stevenson took a different approach. Everything that was included in their paper was thematic. The had a set point, soldiers in Vietnam war and broke it into segments, themes such as the Psychological view with subtitles about drugs, the government and how the soldiers felt. When dates were used it wet chronologically. Similar to Serlin the way they set up their paper made sense because they focused on set topics in each paragraph.
The key things to pull from the papers is that the US government will take any means to make sure they are the winners. They will twist stories to make sure they get funding for projects ( Serlin and Nuclear funding) and (the Vietnam war). The media pays a key part because the government has the power to censor what will cause harm to their plans.
I think that your image is important because many people do not know how big a part the US State Department played in censoring material about postwar Japan. Even in the case of the Hiroshima maidens the US State Department changed their mind and sent a telegram to Japan not allowing the Hiroshima maidens to come to the US because they feared that it would provoke anti-nuclear sentiment. Japan ignored the telegram and sent them anyway but I think it shows how the US government really wanted the American public to forget about Japan.
I don’t think the US government wanted to forget about Japan. i think they wanted the people to forget about the horrors that the government inflicted in Japan.
I love the media and government censorship spin you took when discussing these articles. Thinking about today, we see the same thing happening; the government advertises for the military on television and radio, telling us that joining the military will better the individual and the country. They don’t talk about PTSD or how the government is on the brink of a shutdown but upping the military budget by billions of dollars. Today we are completely surrounded by media, so it seems likely for this censorship/media spin to occur, but even in the 1950s with a way less media in people’s everyday lives, the same idea rings true.
Do you still think censorship now is as heavy as it was before.
I think it’s important to understand that the government always has its hands in the affairs of the people. The government always has some sort of method to control what is happening. In my opinion, in this situation it seemed like the government was trying to convince people that Japan wasn’t THAT affected by the atomic bombs. Many people at the time felt they were extremely inhumane and that the US was monstrous for dropping them.
I totally agree that was how I was trying to write my blog.
To me, government censorship is wrong but is always around. At the end of the day, the government chooses what it lets out to the public so that others perceive it in a favorable light. The problem arises when their charade is shown for what it is and forces them to own up to their mistakes. Even today we acknowledge what we have done to Japan but have never truly done anything to “pay back” the suffering it caused. But, if we ever did so, it means that the government would have to own up to its mistakes and we all know this does not happen very often, if at all.