There’s a scene in Oppenheimer in which US military planners gather with the eponymous scientist leading the development of the atomic bomb to review the list of Japanese cities identified as potential targets for the first nuclear attacks. Henry Stimson, the secretary of war, tells Robert Oppenheimer the top brass had started with a list of 12 cities but took Kyoto, the ancient capital 300 miles southwest of Tokyo, off because of its cultural significance to the Japanese people. After a pause he adds wistfully that he and his wife had spent their honeymoon there.
The line elicited a murmur of laughter in the New York cinema where I watched Christopher Nolan’s mesmerically brilliant movie. But there’s a deeply unsettling quality to it. It’s
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