Paul Ham
Teoksen Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath tekijä
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Paul Ham is an Australian historian, journalist and author, He was born in Sydney, Australia in 1960. He earned his master's degree in economic history from the London School of Economics. He began working for the London Sunday Times in 1998 as their Australia correspondent. He is the author of näytä lisää Kokoda (2004), Vietnam: The Australian War (2007), Hiroshima Nagasaki (2011), Sandakan: The Untold Story of the Sandakan Death Marches (2012), 1914: The Year the World Ended (2013), and Passchendaele: Requiem for Doomed Youth (2017). He won the Queensland Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 2014 for his work, 1914: The Year the World Ended. He also received the 2018 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Douglas Stewart Prize for Nonfiction for Passchendaele: Requiem for Doomed Youth. His other work includes 1913, The Target Committee, and Honey, We Forgot the Kids (co-authored with psychotherapist Bernie Brown). (Bowker Author Biography) näytä vähemmän
Image credit: Paul Ham. Photo courtesy of Mosman Library.
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Captain Bullen's War - The Vietnam War Diary of Captain John Bullen (2009) — Toimittaja — 9 kappaletta
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Behind the scenes, the heads of the military were resistant to the increasing conviction of the civilian members of the government that a peace had to be brokered - but the stumbling block was the US insistence on unconditional surrender. The Emperor had to be preserved and this had not been guaranteed. The book documents the peace 'feelers' these top officials put out, through various channels, the chief one being via the ambassador to the Soviet Union who was expected to convince the Russian goverment to be the mediator of an end to the war despite the - unusual for the time - blunt and determined attempts by that ambassador to explain to his superiors that the Russians had no interest in doing that and were in fact building up to break their agreement with Japan. The strange system of government in Japan at the time - where the Emperor was literally a living god but was also rarely expected to voice his own opinion and where, if he said that Japan should surrender, it would be seen as influence from corrupt officials who would then be fair game for assassination - meant that despite crippling losses and a mounting death toll from the conventional bombing, there was no will among the military or their leaders to cease fighting.
Contrary to the impression which has been given by the US government since the end of WWII, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are shown in the book to be of no consequence to the Japanese rulers. The chief reason for their finally agreeing to surrender was that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan and was invading Japanese conquered territory in China. It was useful as an excuse - the Emperor for one used this in his broadcast to the general population that it was to save them from a cruel new weapon, but in his broadcast to the remnant of the Japanese fighting forces, he didn't mention it - in that, the reason given was that the Soviet Union had declared war and there was no point fighting such an overwhelmingly superior force. The author shows that the Japanese would most likely have surrendered without the dropping of atomic weapons, certainly without Nagasaki being bombed, and could have been induced to give up due to the blockade which had starved the country of all raw materials and fuel and food supplies. The decision had already been made in the US government not to invade, even before the atomic bomb had been tested, so there certainly was no saving of huge numbers of American lives as the public have always been told despite the few dissenting voices.
After the war, the US officials clamped down on news of radiation sickness and confiscated the documentation of Japanese doctors who tried to research it, as well as refusing to hand over any medical supplies to those desperately struggling medical professionals. At the same time, with inducements of food - or sweets to children - they induced Japanese who had felt the effects of the bomb or its aftermath to submit to tests, and did not provide any treatment. The whole attitude was one of extreme callousness. I had read about this before, but here it forms part of the continuous narrative of self serving and self deceiving attitudes among certain men in power in the occupation forces. Some did speak out, but reports were hushed up and so on.
In general, this is an illuminating book which raises moral questions such as how is it possible for countries which prided themselves on being Christian and democratic to inflict such horrendous suffering on a civilian population - commencing with the carpet bombing with incendiaries and high explosives and culminating in nuclear holocaust. As Ham shows, the Allies had condemned the barbaric treatment of prisoners and those conquered by Germany and Japan, and yet in effect had sunk to the same level. The only thing that holds this book back from a 5 star rating for me is that it is very focused on the US role in the Pacific and does not even acknowledge that the Royal Navy had a role in the Pacific war, which is an attitude shown in Hollywood portrayals for some years. A small acknowledgement of the British contribution in WWII would have provided a little balance.… (lisätietoja)