Academic freedom enola gay exhibit
He notes, for example, that although Admiral Leahy wrote of the bomb as a horrific device in 1950, there is no evidence that he felt this way in 1945, contrary to what revisionist-including, according to Maddox, the Smithsonian-have argued.Ī check on the relevant passage in the original script (long obtainable from opponents of the exhibit and now published in a separate book) shows that script writers mentioned Leahy's 19 stances separately without making the latter the dominant one. Maddox joins the fray on the side of exhibit opponents by attacking the original manuscript in his Introduction.
The proposed show was canceled despite revisions proposed to appease the Smithsonian's adversaries. The way Maddox takes to task the original manuscript of the canceled Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibit cheapens his work unnecessarily. Though I remain impressed with the clear-headed assessments Maddox provides throughout his study, I am nevertheless troubled by one aspect in particular. Maddox supports Alperovitz's opponents in a fairly convincing manner, yet other aspects of Maddox's approach leave the reader with a sense of unease. Yet the lack of a uniformly satisfactory explanation on both sides of the debate leaves the spectators confused.
As Alperovitz has worked over the years to refine and support his claims, arguments between him and his detractors have increased in virulence. This does not mean that Maddox is beating a dead horse-quite the contrary. In some ways, Maddox's quasi-systematic criticism of Alperovitz echoes the ways in which reviewers lashed out when the first edition of Alperovitz's book appeared. Maddox's point is well taken and has been central to opinions on both sides of the issue: that beyond memoranda, statistics, and political meetings, the setting and the "mood" of the times are essential to understanding the behavior of the American and Japanese leaderships. Maddox notes that scholars who use the revised figure of 200,000 casualties (as opposed to the 500,000 given in Truman's memoirs) to assert their criticism of the atomic decision fail to take into account that this is still a "staggeringly high" number. In the process, he argues that the "new evidence" Alperovitz described has in fact been available for years. by striking out at anyone who may have considered the question of inflated invasion casualty figures. Although this may be an acceptable challenge (evidence used to support falsifiable claims is what keeps many political commentators going), Maddox commits himself to responding to Alperovitz et al. Attacking the casualty figures used to support a conspiracy thesis, Maddox suggests that this amounts to "writing history backwards" (p. In both the Introduction and Chapter 4, Maddox weighs the evidence concerning the rationale and feasibility of a Japanese invasion. The same is true of his handling of the casualty question. He is fairly convincing when arguing these issues, yet by choosing sides he weakens his claim to dispassionate historiography. Maddox tends to side with conservative historians on both counts (who argue, briefly, that Moscow was not a variable in the decision and that Japan could not have been impressed). The Soviet issue (whether dropping the bomb was done solely to impress Moscow for political and military gains) and the Japanese one (whether Tokyo would have surrendered solely because of a threat to drop the bomb) have become major points of contention between conservative and revisionist historians. In analyzing the decision to bomb, Maddox considers several major points, including the Soviet and Japanese dimensions and the casualty question. Maddox begins his investigation by reviewing the dilemmas president Harry Truman faced as he took over from Franklin D. motives for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. political scholarship influenced by the Vietnam war, which heavily criticized U.S.
Maddox argues, with reason, that Alperovitz epitomizes the extreme revisionism that characterized 1960s U.S. Over nine chapters, Maddox takes the reader along the complex and sometimes confusing path of political and military decision-making in an attempt to dispel what he terms "the fondness of many academics for tales of conspiracy in high places." The "many" academics seem to have a single leader: Gar Alperovitz, the author of Atomic Diplomacy (1965 rev. This also becomes clear in historiographical terms in Robert James Maddox's review of the events leading to the decision to drop the bomb. postage stamp showing an atomic cloud, opinions ran deep. From the congressional rancor over the canceled Enola Gay exhibit to Japanese disgust with the U.S. The controversies of summer 1995 surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan left all sides agreed on only one point: little, if anything, was historically resolved.