Hiroshima Peace Institute (HPI) of Hiroshima City University held the HPI Research Forum as follows:
1. Speaker
Robert Jacobs (Professor Emeritus of Hiroshima City University)
2. Topic
“Atomic Memeification: “Hiroshima” as a Unit of Measure”
3. Date and Time
July 2, 2026 (Thursday) 16:20-17:50
4. Venue
Room 409, Faculty of Information Sciences Annex 4F, Hiroshima City University
(3-4-1, Ozuka-Higashi, Asaminami-ku, Hiroshima)
5. Seating Capacity
30 people (first-come first-served basis)
6. Language
English only
7. Abstract of the Forum
Increasingly, the word “Hiroshima” is being used to denote a unit of energy. We are told that the Kahramanmaraş earthquake of 2023 released the force of “32 Hiroshimas,” or that the heating of the Earth’s oceans under global heating is equivalent to five Hiroshima bombs per second. In these clickbait headlines the impact of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima is reduced solely to the amount of blast energy released by the initial detonation. This chapter explores what is lost when the deaths of a hundred thousand people, the injuries and illnesses of countless more, and the contamination of the ecosystem in which Hiroshima is embedded, are reduced to a simple number that can be used, by an internet calculator, to announce how many Hiroshimas your electricity bill is equal to. It argues that the memefication of Hiroshima as a unit of energy is one more manifestation of the American narrative of Hiroshima, in which human beings are not included.
8. Profile of the Speaker
Robert Jacobs is a historian of science and technology working on nuclear technologies and radiation technopolitics. He studied the history of nuclear weapons, nuclear testing, nuclear production and nuclear accidents. He is Professor Emeritus at Hiroshima City University after serving as a professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute and the Graduate School of Peace Studies. His most recent book, Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha, was published by Yale University Press in 2022 and translated into Japanese by Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai in 2025.