Atomic bomb literature includes a wide spectrum of writings: historical, political, scientific, journalistic, as well as what is traditionally considered literary: novels, poems, and plays. But such distinctions encounter special problems when they are applied to atomic bomb literature, two of which I will discuss in this paper: fictionalizing fact in first-person narratives and fictionalizing fictions.
The first-person narrative in atomic bomb literature challenges the boundaries of fiction in a number of ways. Ōta Yōko, for example, attempted to fictionalize the facts of Hiroshima. The series of novels and short stories from Shikabane no machi to Yūnagi no machi to hito to is clearly based on Ōta’s experiences of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath, and yet these works are also clearly fictionalized, so that her works are at the same time documents, commentaries, and novels.
The second problem, fictionalizing a fiction, is exemplified by the case of Claude Eatherly, who was depicted in the mass media and later in works of literature as the “Hiroshima pilot” who repented his crime. A comparison of Eatherly’s letters to Günther Anders with a number of novels, plays, and poems in the context of the facts revealed in William B. Huie’s biography of Eatherly, The Hiroshima Pilot, will illustrate the intricacies of this second border clash on the boundaries of fiction.
