FIVE MYTHS ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Reviewed 10/19/2014

Access to this book courtesy of the

FIVE MYTHS ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS Ward Wilson New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, January 2013				Rating: 4.0 High
ISBN-13 978-0-547-85787-9
ISBN-10 0-547-85787-X	187pp.	HC/BWI	$22.00

Errata

Page 25:

"Whether the United States was right or wrong, what Harry Truman knew and why he agreed to go ahead, whether an offer to allow the emperor to remain would have gotten Japan to surrender earlier, why the scientists who had doubts about using the Bomb were ignored, whether lives were saved, whether Japan would have surrendered anyway because of conventional bombing or some other reason—all this is beside the point."

I don't agree. All these matters are very relevant. In fact, the author devotes considerable time and effort in showing that neither conventional bombs nor the two atomic ones were decisive in forcing Japan to surrender.

Page 28:	"How could Japan's leaders have felt that Hiroshima touched off a crisis and yet not met to talk about the problem for three days?"
	Incredulity is not a cogent argument. The author himself points out on page 25 that Japan's communications system had been wrecked by the war (although he does not say to what degree.) Another possibility is that some of the members of the Supreme Council were away from Tokyo and only made it back there on August 9th.

Page 30:	"The fact that a city could be destroyed with a single weapon, Togo presumably argued..."
	It seems to me that presumption is as poor an argument as incredulity.

Page 32:	"Sixty-eight cities in Japan were attacked, and all of them were either partially or completely destroyed."
	The author gives no source for this information.

Page 40:	"(He uses the word 'shigeki,' which is best translated as 'serious jolt,' not its cousin 'shogeki,' which is 'shock.')"
	Is this a distinction without a difference? To me, a serious jolt seems very similar to a shock.

Page 44:	"After Hiroshima was bombed on August 8, both options were still alive."
	Is this a date goof? It could be just a missing comma, in which case "was bombed, on August 8" fixes it. But given the other instances of sloppy writing in the book, I feel I'm being generous.

Page 54:	"The notion that the decade of the 1950s was a decisive change in nuclear weaponry is now a commonplace in histories, a conclusion that can be relied on as fact."
	Which fact the author promptly labels as illusory.

Page 57:	"There may have been some limited sort of revolution in the 1950s, but there is certainly nothing like it today."
	And this is beside the point, because the 1950s is the period under discussion.

Page 58:	"Almost all the strategists in the United States agreed that, while strategic bombing had not been decisive in World War II, it was certainly decisive now."
	Grammar: S/B "would certainly be decisive". (Unless the author has a specific recent instance of strategic bombing in mind. Perhaps the carpet-bombing of North Vietnam? That proved indecisive. More to the point, since the concern is with nuclear bombing, the author can have no example in mind since none has occurred.)

Page 60-61:	"One response to the evidence about destroying cities is to argue, as Kevin Drum has..." and "At its heart, Drum's argument is the nuclear-exceptionalism argument."
	The source for Drum's argument is not cited, and he does not appear in the index.

Page 83:	"In a country as small as Israel—at its narrowest point, it is only 9.3 miles across—it doesn't take long for forces that break through the lines to threaten the survival of the nation."
	In this discussion of the 1973 war, the author ignores the question of the relative strength of conventional forces. I note that Israel won the 1973 war.

Page 92:	"The United States also experienced a series of distractions."
	The author mentions the civil rights movement, urban riots, and the war in Vietnam. The space program, not so much.

Page 93:	"From 1815 to 1848, there were thirty-three years of comparative peace in Europe that was not the result of nuclear weapons."
	Number error: S/B "were not the result".

Page 113:	"Agammemnon, leader of the Acheans, insists that Achilles give up a beautiful girl name Breseis."
	Spelling: S/B "named".

Page 115:	"Is it sensible to rely on a tremendously destructive, delicately balanced, hair-trigger system whose strength may be nothing more than perception?"
	I submit that a tremendously destructive weapon cannot be accurately described as being without strength.

Page 115:	"At its heart, the apocalypse stories are about our lack of control over events."
	Number error: S/B "the apocalypse story is".