I finally finished the last of the essays earlier this afternoon, and they're all handed in! Oh, the feeling of not having a deadline looming over me. (On that note, I'm amazed at some of those here who are participating in National Novel Writing Month and pulling off over 2,000 words a day.)



But I really am not sure what to write, especially because of what I was writing for one of the three essays--a historiographical account of the atomic bombings, or rather a paper about how Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the victims have been studied for the past sixty years. It's hard to go over it again, not only because of the actual hibakusha accounts (I was shaking by the time I finished typing last night) but because of the early scientific articles released by Allied research teams, which are disgusting in how much they treat the survivors of the bombs like lab animals.

If anyone actually wants to read the paper or see the list of sources I used, I'd be happy to share it with you. If not, then please at least look into John Whittier Treat's Writing Ground Zero, a very detailed and expansive overview of "atomic-bomb literature" that can refer you to many of the poems and other works that were written by hibakusha since the dropping of the bombs. There are some excellent articles on JSTOR, a digital archive of scholarly essays, but it would be difficult to see them since access to the site is largely limited to students, professors, and scholars affiliated with universities. I'll look around and see if the articles were published somewhere else on the web.


For something cheerful, here's the full version of Suga Shikao's Hajimari no Hi, the song I posted several entries earlier. There's a rap section in the middle by Mummy-D, which is surprisingly catchy--Mummy-D's vocalizations really stand out against Suga's smooth voice during the chorus.

And that was from Sigma Harmonics, a game for the Nintendo DS that will likely never be released outside of Japan. I feel nostalgic listening to the soundtrack, since the game was in development last year--my first year in school--and I listened to the title song while working on my papers. Try listening to the rest of the soundtrack if you have the time!