Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms
- Introduction
- 1 In the shadow of Hiroshima: the United States and Asia in the aftermath of Japanese defeat
- 2 The Korean War, the atomic bomb and Asian–American estrangement
- 3 Securing the East Asian frontier: stalemate in Korea and the Japanese peace treaty
- 4 A greater sanction: the defence of South East Asia, the advent of the Eisenhower administration and the end of the Korean War
- 5 ‘Atomic Madness’: massive retaliation and the Bravo test
- 6 The aftermath of Bravo, the Indochina crisis and the emergence of SEATO
- 7 ‘Asia for the Asians’: the first offshore islands crisis and the Bandung Conference
- 8 A nuclear strategy for SEATO and the problem of limited war in the Far East
- 9 Massive retaliation at bay: US–Japanese relations, nuclear deployment and the limited war debate
- 10 The second offshore islands crisis and the advent of flexible response
- 11 The Chinese bomb, American nuclear strategy in Asia and the escalation of the Vietnam War
- Conclusion: from massive retaliation to flexible response in Asia
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of acronyms
- Introduction
- 1 In the shadow of Hiroshima: the United States and Asia in the aftermath of Japanese defeat
- 2 The Korean War, the atomic bomb and Asian–American estrangement
- 3 Securing the East Asian frontier: stalemate in Korea and the Japanese peace treaty
- 4 A greater sanction: the defence of South East Asia, the advent of the Eisenhower administration and the end of the Korean War
- 5 ‘Atomic Madness’: massive retaliation and the Bravo test
- 6 The aftermath of Bravo, the Indochina crisis and the emergence of SEATO
- 7 ‘Asia for the Asians’: the first offshore islands crisis and the Bandung Conference
- 8 A nuclear strategy for SEATO and the problem of limited war in the Far East
- 9 Massive retaliation at bay: US–Japanese relations, nuclear deployment and the limited war debate
- 10 The second offshore islands crisis and the advent of flexible response
- 11 The Chinese bomb, American nuclear strategy in Asia and the escalation of the Vietnam War
- Conclusion: from massive retaliation to flexible response in Asia
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Few events of the twentieth century have received as much sustained attention from historians, or been the subject of such enduring controversy, as the atomic bombing of Japan in August 1945. The predominant focus of interest has tended to be on the sequence of events that, along with the motivations of the principal antagonists, led to the attacks that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with all the terrible human suffering that they involved. Set against repeated efforts to defend the use of the bombs as a means to shorten the war have been accounts which have variously branded the action as needless, in that Japan's surrender was imminent, as a morally reprehensible example of targeting a civilian population for mass destruction, and as partly driven by a political desire to demonstrate American power, not least to intimidate a Soviet Union which was already emerging as a dangerous potential post-war rival to the United States. Many choose, moreover, to look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki either as the coda to a world war of unmatched scope and intensity, or as opening signals for the international tensions, and incipient destructive potential, that would come to characterize the soon to develop Cold War. Virtually all studies recognize that the first operational use of the bomb marked a watershed in conceptions of war and the development of strategic thought.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- After HiroshimaThe United States, Race and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945–1965, pp. 1 - 6Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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