Hiroshima in America; A Half Century of Denial

New York: Avon Books, 1995. First Avon Books Trade Printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good. xviii, 427, [7] pages. Footnotes. With a New Afterword for the paperback edition by the Authors. Appendix: Cultural Responses to Hiroshima. Notes. Index. Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926) is an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence and for his theory of thought reform. He was an early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory. Greg Mitchell (born 1947) is an American author and journalist who has written twelve non-fiction books on United States politics and history of the 20th and 21st centuries. Mitchell was editor of Nuclear Times magazine (1982 to 1986), and became interested in the history of the United States' use of the atom bomb during World War II. He addressed issues related to this in a 1996 book co-written with Robert Jay Lifton, "Hiroshima in America". Derived from a Kirkus review: Lifton and Mitchell are concerned with examining the motivations of those who made the decisions, particularly Truman, and the effects of that decision on the development of subsequent US policy. An analysis of Truman's announcement of the bombing shows his determination to justify the bomb's use as a military necessity. Early American responses included government suppression of evidence of the radiation effects on residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman emerges as a fundamentally decent man who became caught up in the atomic fervor of scientists and military men. The authors appear to argue that the official Hiroshima narrative was a myth driven by a need on the part of Americans to distance themselves from what they had done. The authors argue that the existence of the bomb, and the moral consequences of the US having been the first to use it, have had profound moral, psychological, and political effects on Americans as a people.