Then curator Martin Harwit's plan to view the atomic bombing from the ground faced fierce opposition, primarily from WWII veterans who deemed the exhibition 'unpatriotic.' This debate precisely displays the nation-state framework in which the atomic bombing incident was situated. Acknowledging that the atomic bomb narrative is most often confined to a nation-state framework, I begin with an analysis of the debate surrounding the Smithsonian Institution's 1995 exhibition of the Enola Gay and other items and documents relating to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Focusing upon the atomic bomb narratives in Japan, I analyze the formation and transformation of the Japanese atomic bomb narrative and challenge this prevalent framework as applied in discussions of the atomic bomb incident. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the ethical implications of narrative as one form of discourse on historical events.