Letters to the Editor

We are always pleased to have letters to the editor because this shows that people are reading our Journal seriously. However, due to space limitations, we ask that letters be kept under 500 words.

To the Editor:

I would like to thank Stanley Falk for his comprehensive review of my book Imperial Japan's World War Two 1931-1945. (JMH, January 2009).

I do have one important clarification. In the first paragraph of his review he writes that part of my theme was "Japan's atrocities and other war crimes fully justified the use of the atomic bombs against her to end the war." I would like to make it clear that I did not intend to suggest in my book, in any way, that dropping the atomic bomb would have been justified for the purpose of retribution. Rather, in Chapter 13 (pp.199-213, including Figure 13), I make the case that the bomb was justified because of the approximately 100,000 Allied Asian and Western lives plus some 50,000 Japanese lives being lost each added week the war continued and Japan refused to end it. There is a high probability that the war was shortened by many weeks, if not months, and at least a million lives spared. Truman's decision to use the bomb to end the war and save lives is defensible. (See my Letter to the Editor concerning the use of the atomic bomb in the same JMH, January 2009 issue, p. 348.)

My intention in writing the book was to provide an overview of the long violent war and the massive numbers of victims, particularly throughout East Asia, to bring home to the reader the horrific consequences of Japan's war of aggression and occupation.

The American education and media establishments have generally given Japan a pass on this critical WWII history. This has limited our understanding of this legacy and the pressing need for modern Japan to accept its responsibility and make meaningful amends, particularly to its Asian neighbors.

We in America, I believe, as friends of Japan, have an obligation to encourage modern Japan to set things right in Asia just as Germany has in Europe, so that Japan's WWII legacy is no longer a thorn in their underlying relations with neighboring nations.

My casualty data can be checked at www.japanww2.com or in my book.

Werner Gruhl
Columbia, Maryland

Dr. Falk responds:

I didn't use the word "retribution" nor imply it in my review. And Gruhl himself supports my interpretation of his theme by his statement here that "the bomb was justified because of the approximately 100,000 Allied Asian and Western lives . . . lost each added week the war continued." As his book clearly shows, most of these, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other lives were lost during the war because of "Japan's atrocities and other war crimes." The atomic bomb, he pointed out, ended these horrors.

To the Editor:

I am writing to respond to B. Grob-Fitzgibbon's disparaging remarks about my contribution to Intelligence, Statecraft and International Power in your October 2008 issue. The point of my article was that invading Iraq without collecting adequate intelligence is a bad idea in both ancient and modern contexts. I know few commentators who would disagree with that premise. To harp on three lines in the entire article and ignore 99% of the content suggests that BG-F does not have the expertise to adequately judge the scholarship. It is exactly historians who have the responsibility to judge foreign policy and to suggest that one can do so without being political is naïve at best. Being critical of Mr. Bush's war no more disqualifies my historical judgment than support of it disqualifies BG-F from reviewing my article.

Rose Mary Sheldon
Virginia Military Institute
Lexington, Virginia

Dr. Grob-Fitzgibbon reponds:

In response to Dr. Sheldon's letter, I share her judgment that "invading Iraq without collecting adequate intelligence is a bad idea." I also agree, to a certain extent, that the...