With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion, and Moral Imagination.

• Author: Ayvazian, Andrea

When at age sixty Edward Albee was asked how long it took him to write the play, Three Tall Women, he replied, "Sixty years and four months." Joseph Gerson might make a similar response if asked how long it took him to write With Hiroshima Eyes: Atomic War, Nuclear Extortion, and Moral Imagination. Gerson's twenty-five years of studying, organizing against, and writing about nuclear weapons and U.S. military intervention have been crystallized in this work.

With Hiroshima Eyes offers the reader a historical account of the decision to build and then use nuclear weapons on the Japanese during World War II, and the subsequent decisions to use the weapons (just as one may "use" a loaded gun even though the trigger is never actually pulled) in times of crisis to maintain American hegemony.

The book provides us with a survey of fifty years of "atomic diplomacy" and an analysis of the regions and wars in which nuclear weapons have played a major role in American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.

It's a far cry from the dry and technical discussion of atomic war you often hear in the media. Gerson has brought a remarkable intensity to his subject. For many years the peace secretary of the New England office of the American Friends Service Committee, he cares a great deal about the material he is covering.

In the preface, he tells us he struggled with the title of the book, since he was hesitant to use Hiroshima to symbolize the two nuclear holocausts inflicted on Japan. But, Gerson points out, just as Auschwitz has become emblematic of the entire European Judeocide," Hiroshima has come to represent far more than the single atomic bomb dropped on that city at 8 A.M. on August 6, 1945.

The book is dedicated to, and incorporates the teachings of, the hibakusha - the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and he writes movingly about the lessons he has learned from the hibakusha who have been his guides, hosts, teachers, and friends during his many trips to Japan.

Chapter Two of With Hiroshima Eyes, "The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Playing the Master Card," may be the most remarkable chapter in this remarkable book.

Revealing the many layers of the story surrounding the bombing of the two cities, Gerson explains how Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected, how the groundwork was laid, and how the falsehoods about the necessity of the bombings were crafted.

Because Mr. Gerson's detailed account of the bombings is mixed with...