David B,
I have been desultorily searching the internet in an attempt to determine
why you, and a half dozen other historians, have decided that the US
dropped the A-bomb on mostly purely innocent women and children simply to
deter Russia from agression. The only person I have found who forcefully
advanced such a notion so far is Leo Szilard. All other persons, including
the scientists on the Manhattan Project and government officials talked
mainly in terms of avoiding an invasion of Japan. It was felt that such an
approach would ultimately save lives on both sides. At least one estimate
held that 500,000 Allied lives would be lost in subdueing Japan with a
ground invasion plus many more Japanese lives. We have seen that the
Japanese had about 10,000 aircraft, most of which would be used as
Kamakazis, as well as many small boats and even humans who wouod be covered
with explosives and used to blow up ships and even tanks. Truman specified
that a purely military target should be used but I can only conclude that
such a target was not available. Hiroshima was a largely military target.
It makes me wonder about the motives of US historians who would advance
such a notion without overwhelming evidence. To cast the US in a role of
murdering innocent women and children to gain a doubtful advantage
vis-a-vis Russia is an idea that one should not advance lightly. There is
no doubt in my mind that our leaders, and particularly Harry Truman, would
not have countenanced such a thing. I can find no convincing evidence to
back up this claim.
It is true that I used the Air Force Magazine and the Air Force
Association's arguments in countering the A and S Museum's biased and one
sided exhibit but one has to remember that the average person would not
have known that such a controversy was going on. It was the interested
parties, AFM anbd AFA, who were aware of the Museum's doings and disagreed
with them. It seems to me that they effectively cast doubt on the
Historians who were quoted as well as exposed the one sidedness of the
Museum's presentation. This was covered in a previous message of mine so I
will not repeat it. I am attaching an analysis of the Air and Space
Museum's original script.
April 7, 199
MEMO TO: Monroe Hatch
Info: Goss, Aubin, Marrs
SUBJECT: Analysis of Air & Space Museum Script
FROM: John Correll
As requested, here is a detailed analysis of the 559-page National Air and
Space Museum script, "The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic
Bomb, and the Origins of the Cold War." Among the findings of our content
analysis are these figures:
49 Photos of Japanese casualties.
3 Photos of American casualties.
5 Photos of Japanese military members in military role.
65 Photos of American military members in military role.
302 Total text pages in script.
4 Text pages with references to Japanese atrocities.
66 Text pages on Hiroshima/Nagasaki "ground zero."
13 Text pages on Japanese casualties, suffering, damage from earlier B-29
missions.
25 "Ground Zero" photos featuring women, children, mutilated religious
objects.
13 "Ground Zero" artifacts related to women, children, religion.
2 Text pages on Japan's search for a diplomatic solution.
4 Text pages on US avoidance of a diplomatic solution.
1 Aggressive, anti-American statements by Japanese.
10 Aggressive, anti-Japanese statements by Americans.
Can such ratios be a coincidence? Details on these and other findings are
in the attachment.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Analysis of "Crossroads" script
Prepared by: John T. Correll
April 7, 1994
Missing: Balance, Context, Objectivity
This content analysis examines various aspects of "The Crossroads: The End
of World War II, the Atomic Bomb, and the Origins of the Cold War," an
exhibition script dated January 12, 1994, and circulated by the National
Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. Two considerations
should be borne in mind in regard to this paper:
1. This analysis is a supplement to -- not a replacement for -- our March
15 report. That report is our basic statement of the problem.
2. This is not a checklist for "fixing" the script. This analysis merely
identifies items that can be specified or quantified and which help to
illustrate the problem. Other factors, such as the decision to build the
program around the atomic bomb, give the exhibit a particular orientation.
Point changes at the margin can have only a limited corrective effect.
Examination of the Smithsonian's own script, along with other factors we
have reported, substantiate our belief that:
The exhibition as planned lacks balance and historical context.
It is designed to play on emotions.
It is part of a pattern in which the Smithsonian depicts US military
airpower in a negative way.
Please note that the January 12 Smithsonian script analyzed here is the one
incorporating what we described in our report as "major concessions to
balance" when compared with previous exhibition plans by the museum.
Relative Attention to Casualties. Our March 15 report explained how the
exhibit distorts the historical balance by taking the last six months of
the war out of context and by focusing on Japanese casualties and
suffering. An example from the script:
49 Photos of Japanese casualties.
3 Photos of American casualties.
first page of section 400.
(Many of these photos are in what the museum's July 1993 concept plan
called the "emotional heart of the exhibit" where "photos of [Japanese]
victims, enlarged to life-size, will stare out at the visitor." This photo
count does not include "video testimony" from "bomb-affected persons," 400
23.)
Even with so lop-sided a ratio, a simple photo count understates the
imbalance. Some images evoke stronger emotional reactions than others. The
picture of American dead on Iwo Jima (100 12), for example, is almost
antiseptic when compared to the grisly photo of Tokyo fire raid casualties
(100 35). The images in the "Ground Zero" section -- where the curators
advise parental discretion -- are likewise shocking.
_________________
Emphasis on Women and Children. The museum director has stated that it is
"happenstance," not a deliberate ideological twist, that women, children,
and mutilated religious objects are so prominent in the "Ground Zero"
section (400 1-66).
25 "Ground Zero" photos featuring women, children, mutilated religious
objects.
13 "Ground Zero" artifacts related to women, children, religion.
Here is a more detailed breakout of these numbers:
Children: 14 photos, 8 artifacts.
Women and children: 3 photos.
Women: 5 photos.
Mutilated religious objects: 3 photos, 5 artifacts.
If anything, the prominence of women and children is even greater than
this, since sex and age of individuals in other "Ground Zero" casualty
photos cannot be determined from the script and photocopies of the
graphics. The curators are also "considering" a model of the Hiroshima
Girls' High School for a display case in the center of the "Ground Zero"
section of the exhibition. (400 31.)
_________________
The "Naked Aggression" Factor. In a letter to the Washington Times, Dr.
Martin Harwit, museum director, said our assessment of the balance of the
exhibit was inaccurate. He emphasized that "the exhibition describes the
'naked brutality' of Japanese forces in concrete terms, calling attention
to the rape of Nanking, the treatment of POWs, the use of Chinese and
Koreans as slave laborers, and the conduct of biological and chemical
experiments on human victims." This breakout puts Dr. Harwit's "concrete
terms" into context:
302 Total text pages in script.
66 Text pages on Hiroshima/Nagasaki "ground zero."
13 Text pages on Japanese casualties, suffering, damage from earlier B-29
missions.
4 Text pages referring to "naked brutality of Japanese forces in concrete
terms, calling attention to the rape of Nanking, the treatment of POWs, the
use of Chinese and Koreans as slave laborers, and the conduct of biological
and chemical experiments on human victims."
One of the four "naked brutality" items above is a peripheral reference in
the context of an item about US interment of Japanese-Americans. That
yields another measure of balance:
2 pages Text references to US internment of Japanese.
1 paragraph Text references to Japanese treatment of US POWs.
_________________
Sinatra vs Suffering. The impact of the war on the American home front is
minimized. The script says that "For many Americans, combat in the Pacific
remained a distant series of events," although it acknowledges -- with
stunning understatement --that "the cost of victory in American lives" was
"a very real concern for all with loved ones in the Pacific." (100 38.) A
few pages later, it tells how "American youngsters, with time on their
hands and money in their pockets, transformed a New Jersey band singer
named Frank Sinatra into the first teen entertainment idol." (100 41.)
There is a photo of Sinatra. Visitors are unlikely to miss the counterpoint
with grim images of the Japanese home front -- death, hunger, privation.
________________________
Relative Images of Militarism. AFA has complained about the museum's
tendency to depict Americans as ruthless invaders and the Japanese as
desperately defending their homeland (with insufficient explanation why the
homeland needed defense). The script (100 5) says that "For most Americans,
this war was fundamentally different than the one waged against Germany and
Italy -- it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to
defend their unique culture against western imperialism." The script avoids
showing members of the Japanese armed forces in military roles:
5 Photos of military members in military roles.
65 Photos of US military members in military roles.
Taken as a whole, the exhibit emphasizes the military aggressiveness of the
United States and minimizes the aggressiveness of Japan. One indication is
the number of photos of servicemen on each side depicted in military roles.
The American count is conservative. It does not include military personnel
on the home front, the Joint Chiefs, research and development activity, GIs
in recreational activities, drawings (section EG:300), the chaplain (340
74), etc.. Military members in captivity are not counted for either side,
nor are any post-surrender photos.
____________________________
Aggressive Americans. Even the expressions of enmity in this exhibit manage
to cast Americans in the more belligerent role:
1 Aggressive, anti-American statements by Japanese.
10 Aggressive, anti-Japanese statements by Americans.
The single anti-American statement is quoted anonymously from Manga Nippon
magazine. Absolutely no Japanese soldiers or officials make strong
anti-American statements in this exhibit, although such statements existed
in abundance. (The script reaches back to 1941 for the George Marshall
statement [100 33], so there were plenty of Japanese polemicists to choose
from.)
The example of American propaganda chosen ("Louseous Japanicas," 100 44) is
an inflammatory cartoon, guaranteed to offend museum visitors of the 1990s.
The agitation level of the Japanese propaganda item ("The Demonic Other"
100 53) is much lower. The script says one Anti-American item is yet to
come. We hope it will be on a par with "Louseous Japanicas" if that choice
is not changed.
___________________
Japan's Quest for Peace. Japan's conciliatory image is further enhanced by
another contrast in the script -- the emphasis on Japan's reported wish to
negotiate.
2 Text pages on Japan's search for a diplomatic solution.
4 Text pages on US avoidance of a diplomatic solution.
Japan's peace initiatives are said to have been frustrated by "die-hard
militarists who wished to fight on" (200 26). By contrast, the script
depicts the US and its leaders as unswervingly belligerent. "Most Americans
despised the Japanese and it was difficult to back away from the policy of
'unconditional surrender' laid down by the Allied leaders in 1943," the
script says (200 30).
_________________
Bomb Crews at Play. Obviously, there is leisure activity for troops in
wartime. Except for the pattern and the imbalance, therefore, it might not
be remarkable that the exhibition script gives more than passing attention
to leisure activities of the 509th Composite Group, the organization that
dropped the atomic bombs.
3 Text pages referring to 509th beer parties, night life during training
missions, other recreational activities.
10 Photos of such activities by 509th.
There are no similar photos of Japanese troops, who often took their
leisure in notorious ways.
The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution is
completing preparations to show the Enola Gay in an exhibit that will open
in May 1995. The plan, however, is to present the aircraft as part of an
emotionally-charged program about the atomic bomb.
The primary focus of Air Force Magazine's report was a 559-page exhibition
script, completed by the museum in January. We drew as well on a series of
previous planning documents for the exhibition, an interview with the
museum director, and a body of statements and letters from museum officials
over the years.
The position of the Air Force Association and Air Force Magazine has been
that the planned exhibit was fundamentally lacking in balance and context.
The curators picked up the story of the war in 1945 as the end approached.
Their script depicted the Japanese as defenders of homeland and emperor but
provided little background on Japan's earlier aggression, which had made
such a defense necessary. In this telling of it, the Americans were cast as
ruthless invaders, driven by revenge.
Dr. Martin Harwit, Director of the National Air and Space Museum, told the
museum staff[3] that he had "evidently paid greater attention to accuracy
than to balance" in his initial reading of the script. "A second reading
shows that we do have a lack of balance and that much of the criticism that
has been levied against us is understandable," he said.
Selective Presentation of Consequences. The final section of the script,
"The Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," adds a wall label (500 11) quoting
a former soldier who says he and his colleagues heard the news of the
atomic bomb with "relief and joy" because their lives would not be at risk
in an invasion of Japan. (No photo is indicated.) We welcome the inclusion,
of course, but this eight-line wall label is all the exhibit says about the
invasion that no longer needed to happen. In the same section of the
script, greater attention goes to the postwar antinuclear movement (e.g.,
500 19), complete with "Ban the Bomb" buttons, other artifacts, and peace
demonstration photos.
An Attitude of Imbalance. The script is interspersed with a series of
"Historical Controversies": Would the Bomb Have Been Dropped on the
Germans? Did the Demand for Unconditional Surrender Prolong the War? How
Important Was the Soviet Factor in the "Decision to Drop the Bomb"?[8] Was
a Warning or Demonstration Possible? Was an Invasion Inevitable Without the
Bomb? Was the Decision to Drop the Bomb Justified?
A recurring undertone in the plans and scripts for this exhibit has been
suspicion about why the United States used the atomic bomb. Museum
officials have seemed reluctant to accept the explanation that it was a
military action, taken to end the war and save lives. Some of the
speculation on this point has been removed in the latest revision, but the
script lingers respectfully on such individuals as nuclear scientist Leo
Szilard, who protested the use of the bomb.
As the "Historical Controversies" listed above indicate, nearly all of the
doubts and suspicions are directed at the United States. The Japanese are
shown repeatedly in a quest for peace, and aggressiveness on their side is
depicted as the province of a few military fanatics. The revised script
eliminates a statement in the previous version (200 27) saying that prior
to 1945, Emperor Hirohito "showed much enthusiasm for the armed forces and
their conquests."
The new script, like the last one, avoids showing warlike images of the
Japanese armed forces. One of the few exceptions is the section on the
Kamikaze (100 19-23), who are treated with near-mystical reverence. They
are seen facing certain death bravely as their comrades and school children
cheer their selflessness. Indeed, they are the only military members on
either side who appear in heroic roles in this exhibit.
Time and again, museum officials have left the impression that any
imbalance is in the eye of Air Force Magazine and that the exhibition is
supported by the historians of the armed forces. A standard element in such
remarks is to prominently identify Dr. Richard Hallion, Historian of the
Air Force, as a member of the museum's advisory committee, followed by a
statement that the committee is supportive of the museum's plan.
Dr. Harwit wrote in April, for example, that "I believe I am not putting
words into the committee members' mouths in saying that the unanimous
response was that our exhibition plans were well informed, accurate, and
responsible."[11] Smithsonian Secretary Adams, writing to Rep. G. V.
"Sonny" Montgomery to dispel "misinformation and unfounded rumor," said
that "The script has been carefully scrutinized for accuracy and balance by
a committee of some of the nation's leading scholars, including Dr. Richard
Hallion, Chief of the U.S.A.F. Center for Air Force History."[12] In the
course of a radio debate, Dr. Crouch said that some of the service
historians -- specifically the historian of the Air Force -- had endorsed
the exhibit.[13]
Dr. Hallion, speaking for himself, gives a different assessment: "The
exhibit as currently structured is not one we would have done. We feel that
though the museum has made considerable progress over its original
concepts, it still needs to show that the central issue behind dropping the
bomb was shortening the war and possibly saving upwards of 500,000 Allied
troops."[14]
Writing to a veteran who inquired, Dr. Hallion said that "The bottom line
is that Harwit and his two curators, Crouch and Neufeld, came under heavy
pressures (as you know) because the Enola Gay exhibit script was not in
balance nor context. As a result, Harwit has formed a new committee to
revise the script so that it doesn't seem that America was the aggressor in
the Pacific!"[15] Referring to the January version of the script, Dr.
Hallion reported that the professional historians of the armed forces
"unanimously consider it a poor script, lacking balance and context."[16]
David writes:
History is basically everything that everbody ever did, so it is rich
enough to prove just about any point. But that flaw only rears its ugly
head when the point maker is being dishonest. And that can usually be
discovered by others in the field. Its hard to get away with that kind
of deception for very long. Liars get busted because smart people are
watching.
Clark writes:
From the majority point of view the liars did get busted. I still have
difficulty understanding where the Museum's point of view is coming from.
Also the revisionist group of historians. I can find no persuasive evidence
for either point of view. Still less can I see why anyone would adopt such
a point of view and label their country as a soulless agressor without much
greater evidence than I see.
I agree that it is hard for the Museum and the revisionist historians to
get away with this kind of deception because so much of the source material
is now available on the internet, whereas, the source material used to be
buried in libraries and vaults and was not readily available to the average
person. We no longer are solely dependent on the Museum and Air Force
Magazine's arguments. Much of the source material is now available to us.
The ability to make a reasonable judgement of historical interpretations is
no longer the sole province of historians.
David writes:
In other words,
when properly used history is a valuable and valid field of inquiry. It
works, even if there are still problems to overcome.
Clark writes:
I agree.
David writes:
I really don't get this tendency to destroy everything that seems
imperfect. I mean, what do you expect? Total omniscience? Also you seem
to suggest that historical perspectives are merely subjective and only
depend on the "passion and power of the individual espousing" that
perspective. I say fooey to that.
Clark writes:
Contrary to some other fields of study, the source material for history
just lays there waiting for interpretation. There is no hurry or other
pressure. Plenty of time for Historians to consider all facets of any
question and come up with a balanced answer. It is also very important.
This episode shows how history can be turned upside down by
misinterpretation or perhaps even by a desire to willfully alter the
understanding of history. The Museum and the half dozen historians have
placed an entirely new interpretation on the motives of the Pacific war.
Such a viewpoint is not far from Hitler's rationalization for eliminating
the Jews.
Ken
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