Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (長谷川 毅 Hasegawa Tsuyoshi, born 23 February, 1941, Tokyo, Japan) is an American historian specializing in modern Russian and Soviet history and the relations between Russia, Japan, and the United States. He taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was director of the Cold War Studies program, until his retirement in 2016.

Hasegawa was born in Tokyo and received his undergraduate education at Tokyo University. He studied international relations and Soviet history at University of Washington, where he earned his doctoral degree in 1969. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1976. Among his awards and fellowships are Fulbright-Hays Research Abroad (1976-77) and a Fulbright Fellowship (2012).[1]

He is known for Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (2005), a revisionist study of diplomacy and the end of the Pacific War. The book won the 2005 Robert Ferrell Award from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. (SHAFR). Hasegawa's research also includes the political history of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Soviet–Japanese relations.

Scholarship and influence

In his 2005 book, Racing the Enemy, Hasegawa puts forward the view that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the decisive factor in the Japanese decision to surrender, ending World War II in the Pacific Theater. Instead, Hasegawa emphasizes the breaking of the Neutrality Pact by the Soviet Union, and the imminent fall of Manchuria and Korea to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.[2] This view is in contrast to earlier critics of the bombing, such as Gar Alperovitz, who argued that US President Harry S. Truman's underlying objective was showcasing US military might, as a deterrent to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's ambitions. Hasegawa emphasizes the extent to which Japanese decision-making was not determined by the nuclear attacks. According to British historian Geoffrey Jukes: "[Hasegawa] demonstrates conclusively that it was the Soviet declaration of war, not the atomic bombs, that forced the Japanese to surrender unconditionally."[3]

This view received criticism. James Maddox, Professor of History Emeritus at The Pennsylvania State University, and author of Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later stated that "The truth is that Racing the Enemy... is based upon pervasive distortions of the documents upon which it is based, and what Hasegawa presents as facts often turn out to be no more than products of his own vivid imagination".[4]

See also


Publications

References

  1. "Curriculum Vitae Tsuyoshi Hasegawa". UCSB, Department of History. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
  2. Dominick Jenkins (August 6, 2005). "The bomb didn't win it". The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-03-23.
  3. Jukes, Geoffrey (2008). "Review of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the surrender of Japan (2006)". Australian Slavonic and East European Studies. St. Lucia, QLD: School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, The University of Queensland. 22 (1–2). ISSN 0818-8149.
  4. Robert James Maddox (April 12, 2006). "Disputing Truman's Use of Nuclear Weapons- Again". The American Thinker.

External links

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