Enola Gay and the Court of History

by Robert P. Newman

Book Overview

In this hard-hitting, thoroughly researched, and crisply argued book, award-winning historian Robert P. Newman offers a fresh perspective on the dispute over President Truman_s decision to drop the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0820470716
• ISBN13: 9780820470719
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publi
• Length: 202 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Good reasearch but flawed presentation

This book takes on an important topic: historical revisionism of the decision to drop the atomic bomb. Now that all persons involved in the decision are dead as are most of the soldiers and families whose lives would have been affected by an invasion of Japan, the modern left has rewritten the history of that decision. The revised history makes make Japan the victim at the end of World War II, not all the peoples against whom it committed atrocities too numerous to mention and for which it refuses to apologize. Mr. Newman explores the original source documents, which include interviews of high officials of wartime Japan and also their testimony at the war crimes tribunal. He also puts this in context of a world that was weary from, in effect, two world wars: first the war in Europe and then the war in Japan and after the war in Europe was won. His evaluation of the evidence is compelling and shows clearly that the atomic bombs and the entry of the USSR into the war, with the atomic bombs being the most important, are the reasons why Japan surrendered. Once he has laid out the evidence and reached his conclusions, he discusses the people on both sides of the debate in the early post-war years, their hidden agendas, and why they reached the conclusions they reached. An interesting point he makes is that sometimes hidden agendas made hawks and doves reach the same conclusions. It is in his discussion of the later years between the end of World War II and the Air and Space Museum debate where the author's flaws come to light. After reading the book, his beliefs can be summarized as "the atomic bomb was necessary, and the hydrogen bomb was evil." While this position is worthy of consideration, the author's extremism in support of it is distracting. Literally everyone, left or right, hawk or dove, Republican or Democrat, military or civilian, who disagrees with him or was involved in something with which he disagreed is bad, disillusioned, or possibly mentally ill. The book contains rhetoric like this throughout, and it gets old when it goes on page after page, year after year, person after person. For me it detracted from his initial research and conclusions. It became clear that he was attached to his position (atomic bomb good/hydrogen bomb bad) with such rigidity and determination that the entire universe turned black and white when viewed through this lens. For me, that undermined the analysis of the decision to drop the bomb. I would say that the first third of the book dealing with factual analysis of the decision to drop the bomb based on interviews, testimony, and writings of contemporary leaders and advisors is an important contribution to historical research. The part that follows, however, detracts from the good portion of the book. I give it five stars for the first third, less for the rest, and a result of four stars.

Deserves much wider readership

In the early 1990's, the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum (NASM) initiated a plan to commemorate the 50th anniversary of end of WWII. The proposed script for some displays, particularly the Enola Gay, caused so much controversy that the display was significantly altered amid charges of political correctness and censorship. Veteran's groups, among others, claimed that NASM was substituting ideology and victimology for facts and NASM staff countered that they were being censored. This very public dispute has driven renewed interest, and some excellent historical scholarship, on the use of the atom bomb, such as this first rate study of how the event has been interpreted since 1945. Respected historian Newman,(emeritas, Pittsburgh) whose last book was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in history, traces the revisions back to Paul Nitze, who wrote much of the sections of the U.S. Strategic Bombing survey dealing with Japan and the atom bombs in particular. Newman states that Nitze believed that the Japanese would have surrendered in a few months and that the bombing, with its greater civilian than military casualties, was immoral. This belief was allowed to color Nitze's report in the survey. Newman documents that Nitze ignored evidence that countered Nitze's beliefs and manipulated other data to support his contentions. Other writers, generally academics and liberals expanded on this, notably P.M.S. Blackett, British peace activist and Nobel laureate who extended the revision by advocating the idea that Truman dropped the bomb to intimidate the Russians. By the sixties, these opinions were spread by such well known polemicists as William Appleman Williams and Gar Alperovitz. Newman finds that Nitze isn't the only writer that ignored material that didn't fit their preconceived notions. For example, most revisionists state that, as of August, 1945, Japan was already defeated, they just hadn't surrendered yet, but Newman correctly points out that Japan had a an army of over one million in China that was advancing, not retreating. When discussing casualties, Newman asks how many Chinese and other asians would have died had the war not ended when it did. He also asks the question: if the use of the atomic bomb by the U.S. is racist, what was what Japan did to China? The generally accepted Chinese casualty estimates are 18-20 million killed! It is well argued, well-researched with the latest scholarship, extensively footnotes (with 21 pages of notes for 152 pages of text) and well written. The index is poor and there are no photographs. The editor of the series, Bruce Gronbeck (U. of Iowa, communications)adds an after essay that is drearily academic in tone but might be of use to rhetoricians. It is too bad that the title was published in an obscure series (Frontiers in Political Communication) by a less widely known, though respectable publisher. Even if the work is aimed at scholars and graduate students, it is so well written, we