Mark Selden, at the website of Japan Focus (5-8-05):

[Mark Selden is a coordinator of Japan Focus. His most recent book is War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century. ]

Japan, the Japanese people, and Japanese-Americans enter the pages of American history textbooks only in treatments of World War II, which, together with the American Revolution, constitutes the high water mark of American triumphalism. At a time when Japanese textbooks are subject to intense public scrutiny for their treatment of the war and colonialism, it is appropriate to examine their American counterparts. Like the treatments of wartime foes in the textbooks of other nations, these reveal as much about dominant American nationalism and chauvinism as they do about Japan and the Japanese. Here I consider two of the primary -- and most contested -- issues discussed in 19 textbooks spanning the years 1958 to 2000 and including many of the most influential among both high school and college textbooks.
 
Textbooks are important vehicles through which contemporary societies transmit ideas of citizenship and both the idealized past and the promised future of the national community. They provide authoritative narratives of the nation, delimit proper behavior of citizens, and outline the parameters of the national imagination. Textbook controversies erupt when prevailing assumptions about national unity and purpose are challenged and when international relations change rapidly as in the post-Cold War era and post-9–11, sometimes rupturing the smooth flow of earlier dominant narratives.
 
The textbooks of nearly all nations bristle with nationalism. There are, nevertheless, differences and gradations that differentiate nations over time. Many American textbooks, far more than their Japanese or German counterparts, [1} for example, invoke national pride in the nation's history, reaching an apogee in the treatment of wars, notably the American revolution and World War II. This pride is manifest in such titles as: The American Pageant, Our American Heritage, The Great Republic, The Enduring Vision, and, perhaps the most lyrical, America: The Glorious Republic. While many of the texts manifest great pride in American achievements, particularly democracy, prosperity, technological prowess, and the rise to world leadership, the best of them, a minority to be sure, raise important questions about the darkest episodes and encourage independent thought about the nation, the world, and historical change. A few of these texts do not hesitate to offer critical judgments on the great blemishes in American history, including racism, the plight of the poor in the midst of great wealth, and the human costs inflicted by American wars.
 
The decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in many ways the defining event of the twentieth century, was from the outset, and has remained ever since, controversial. So, too, was the decision to deprive 112,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans of constitutional rights and intern them for the duration of the war. Two-thirds of their number were American-born and therefore U.S. citizens, thereby calling into question the fundamental rights of citizenship. The remaining third were Japanese citizens who were prevented by discriminatory legislation on the books from 1924 that specifically barred Japanese from obtaining U.S. citizenship. That is, as historian Gary Okihiro observes, they were, in effect, permanent migrant laborers since, unlike other migrants, the law barred them from citizenship. The analysis of 19 U.S. textbooks, both those designed for high school and college use, reveal significant fault lines in the approach to these problems.
 
The Atomic Decision and the End of World War II
 
Consider, first, the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All 19 textbooks discuss the atomic decision in the context of the end of World War II. Some, following an approach that is also favored in Japanese textbooks, confine themselves to"stating the facts." For James Davidson and Mark Lytle, A History of the Republic (303) it is sufficient to note that"over 150,000 Japanese died in the two explosions," and that the two bombs and the Soviet entry into the war on August 8 led to Japan's surrender. Lewis Paul Todd and Merle Curti are even more curt in their Triumph of the American Nation (817). They confine their discussion to the following observations:"First the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Two days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. On August 10 the Japanese government asked for peace." There is no hint of controversy, no allusion to the fierce debates that erupted at the time and continue to this day, and certainly no invitation to students to consider the implications of the decision to drop atomic bombs on the citizens of two large Japanese cities, to reflect on the strategic implications of the bomb with respect to Soviet-American relations, or to examine the options available to U.S. planners, the manifold international context of the surrender, or the costs of alternative policies.  Interestingly, Todd and Curti's earlier text, Rise of the American Nation (739) stated that"Nearly 100,000 of the 245,000 men, women and children in Hiroshima were killed instantly or died soon thereafter," a cost in lives that they weigh against President Harry Truman's decision to drop the bombs explained as"a last resort to force Japan to surrender, and thus to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of American fighting men." The earlier textbook also noted, as the later one did not, the Soviet declaration of war against Japan on August 8 prior to the Nagasaki bomb and prior to Japan's surrender. Those bare facts, even in the absence of analysis, could provide the basis for fruitful discussion of watershed issues in the hands of skillful teachers.
 
The best of these texts examine key dimensions of the atomic controversy, discuss critically Truman's decision to drop the bombs, or note alternatives to it, and consider the human and political costs of alternatives, thereby setting the stage for class discussion of crucial issues of war, peace, and America's global role.
 
John Garraty's The American Nation (702) sharply poses the killing of thousands of civilians against the possible contribution to ending the war and carefully records the Hiroshima casualties (killing 78,000, with 100,000 more injured), though making no mention of those who subsequently died of their wounds or of radiation (140,000 by the end of 1945m many more in years to come), or those whose atomic experience condemned them to suffer throughout their lives. Garraty does add a sobering detail found in no other text that I have consulted, which is the fact that the dead included 20 American POWs in Hiroshima. He proceeds to offer the opinion, one widely shared by many specialists, that the bombing of Nagasaki three days later"was far less defensible, but had the desired result," that is, forcing Japan's surrender, eliding mention both of the Soviet attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria on August 8, and the U.S. softening of surrender terms following the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9.
 
Among the fullest and most balanced treatments is Alan Brinkley's The Unfinished Nation. After noting Truman's claim that the alternative"was an American invasion of mainland Japan that might have cost as many as a million lives," a view effectively challenged by revisionist historians, he gives equal space to the views of Gar Alperovitz and others who dismiss the argument that"the bomb was used to shorten the war and save lives" and insist that, with Japan on the verge of surrender, the United States used the bomb principally "to make Russia more manageable in Europe" by utilizing the U.S. super weapon. Brinkley spells out for students the arguments of proponents and critics, providing rich information concerning the human costs of the atomic bombings, the strategic impact and alternatives, and the cost in lives of the entire war. Making no attempt to resolve the debate, he encourages students to engage themselves in one of the great ethical-political issues of American, Japanese, and world history that shows no sign of closure six decades after the events....

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