From szoraster@zycor.lgc.com Sun Apr 30 11:13:39 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id LAA21542 for ; Sun, 30 Apr 2000 11:13:38 -0700 Received: from lgchexch001.lgc.com (lgchexch001.lgc.com [134.132.92.92]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id LAA21282 for ; Sun, 30 Apr 2000 11:13:34 -0700 Received: by lgchexch001 with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) id ; Sun, 30 Apr 2000 13:13:31 -0500 Message-ID: <462F323275D6D311BA0200805F356C5250D269@lgcadev001.zycor.lgc.com> From: Steve Zoraster To: "'classics@u.washington.edu'" Subject: RE: Death and the military and 1945 and more.... Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 13:13:17 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I suggest "Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire" by Richard B. Frank (Random House, 1999, ISBN: 067941424X) for a different view of "This stunningly successful creation of the mythology still widely accepted today." One point Mr. Frank makes, is that while we were intercepting those famous Japanese diplomatic messages to the USSR about a negotiated peace, we were intercepting many, many more less famous Japanese military messages planning for the battle against the anticipated American invasion. A battle the Japanese expected to win! Sure, they were wrong, but nobody knew that at the time. In fact, by August 1945, Frank reports that Admirals Nimitz and King of the United States Navy worried that the planned invasion would end in a Japanese victory. Truman, etc., can be forgiven for getting it wrong, if the Japanese government itself also got it wrong! I know this particular topic is tangential to this list. I more relevant discussion might be on the differences between what is and has been possible in a democracy - however hypocritical - and an authoritarian state. For example, doesn't the whole argument about what makes a "Just War" goes back to the Romans? And didn't Caesar often claim to be fighting a "defense war" in Gaul? Certainly the United States has no worse a record in using rhetoric to disguise what they are really doing than a lot of other ancient or modern countries? (Not that this makes it right to starve a bunch of Iraqi kids for the sake of our access to Middle East petroleum.) Steven Zoraster -----Original Message----- From: Sipesprngs@aol.com [SMTP:Sipesprngs@aol.com] Certainly the most effective such effort began in March, 1945, with the scripting of news releases in anticipation of the "military" use, in August of that year, of atomic bombs to "shorten" the war and "save lives." This stunningly successful creation of the mythology still widely accepted today is detailed by Gar Alperovitz in "Managing History," Part IV of his book, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb" (Knopf, 1995). Alperovitz is still frequently dismissed as a "revisionist" historian. Actually, his 850-page book treats only one facet of the much larger public-relations fabric promulgated, e.g., by Arthur Compton's masterful "Atomic Quest" (1956). J.W. Worthy Sipe Springs, Texas .