SAMIZDAT NEWS RELEASE
The community is invited to join Samizdat Bookstore and Teahouse Aug. 5 for a virtual author talk from M. G. Sheftall for the release of his latest book, Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses.
Sheftall will join remotely from Japan to discuss both this new book and his first book of the series, Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses.
The talk will be held in Fuller Lodge. There will be tea and refreshments starting at 6:30 p.m., with the remote presentation beginning at 7 p.m. Afterward, signed copies of both books will be available for sale.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sheftall spent years interviewing hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombings, for these two books. These last living witnesses are a vanishing memory resource, the only people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the use of nuclear weaponry.
Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses is an intimate, first-hand account of life in Nagasaki, and the story of incomprehensible devastation and resilience in the aftermath of the second atomic bombing. This blow-by-blow account takes us from the city streets, as word of the attack on Hiroshima reaches civilians, to the cockpit of Bockscar, when Charles Sweeney dropped “Fat Man,” to the interminable six days while the world waited to see if more bombs would fall.
Sheftall has lived in Japan since 1987. He has a PhD in International Relations/Modern Japanese History awarded by Waseda University in Tokyo, which is the most highly regarded private university in Japan. Since 2001, he has been a Professor of Modern Japanese Cultural History and Communication at the Faculty of Informatics of Shizuoka University, which is an institution in the Japanese national university system. Sheftall is married, with two adult sons, and makes his home in Hamamatsu, Japan.
Like this:
Like Loading…
Related