Has the History Profession Awarded a Prize to Another Flawed Book?

Has the History Profession Awarded a Prize to Another Flawed Book?
By Robert P. Newman

Mr. Newman is a distinguished historian and writer, and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. He has published numerous articles and essays on World War II and the Cold War. His first book, The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby, received the Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book on Human Rights Award. More recently, his book Owen Lattimore and the Loss of China was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and reviewed in over forty publications.

Editor's Note Last week at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) announced that Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has won the Robert Ferrell Book Prize for Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan.

The award attracted the notice of Professor Hasegawa's critics, including Robert P. Newman. We asked Mr. Newman to explain his objections. After we had his piece in hand we sent it over to Professor Hasegawa for a response. Click here for Professor Hasegawa's response.

Now that The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations has shot itself in the foot by awarding the Robert Ferrell Prize to Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, it is time for another attempt to moderate the stultifying bias of the history establishment. A year ago, Corey Robin in the London Review of Books articulated the truth that of all human motivations, none is as lethal as ideology:

"The lust for money may be distasteful, the desire for power ignoble, but neither will drive its devotees to the criminal excess of an idea on the march. Whether the idea is the triumph of the working class or of a master race, ideology leads to the graveyard."

The ideology of the history establishment, praising Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, leads to the graveyard of truth about the Japanese surrender in 1945. Perhaps these worthies did not read Hasegawa's concluding chapter, where be finally reveals his objective: to put all the participants in the Pacific War on the same moral plane. Tojo and Anami were no worse than Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. "Thus this is a story with no heroes but no real villains either - just men."

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Please spare me from more revisionist history! Japan started what became WWII in 1931 in Manchuria. Japan wanted to conquer as much of Asia and Micronesia as they could so they could loot it of resources and thus keep resource poor Japan in the game as a major player.

Japan committed major war crimes for which they have never owned up to and the 'Emperor was a war criminal' on a par with Hitler or Stalin. Japan was prepared to fight to the death to defend its 'Home Islands'. We upped the ante with nukes and they surrendered. Japan did not get more than it deserved, it did not get enough. Talk to any survivor of the 'Bataan Death March' or 'The Rape Of Nanking' and you'll see that Japan still has a bill outstanding for what they did in WWII and before WWII.

I'm sorry we only dropped two nukes on Japan. A dozen or so would have been more to my liking.