Bombs, 1983

Arranged in an altar-like configuration, the twenty four panels in Ben Sakoguchi’s Bombs recreate photo documentation of atomic bomb tests, nuclear armed ballistic missiles and aircraft, and, in two poignant images near the center, keloid tumors and flash burns on the bodies of survivors of the United States bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. The artist illustrates these instances of extreme violence and its paraphernalia using the visually pleasing language of commercial art and advertising—bright colors, text layered over images, and slick airbrushed surfaces—a deeply ironic, almost absurd gesture. Like many US-born Japanese Americans, Sakoguchi and his family were incarcerated during World War II, experiencing the irrational terror of the military state firsthand. Made at the height of the people’s protest movement for disarmament, this work’s monumental scale and public address indict wartime brutality and provoke us to consider the complex memory and legacy of World War II.