Science and the Pacific War

In 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War occasioned many reflections on the place of science and technology in the conflict. That the war ended with Allied victory in the Pacific theatre, inevitably focussed attention upon the Pacific region, and particularly upon the Manhattan project and its outcome. It was in the Pacific that Western physics and engineering gave birth to the Atomic Age. However, the Pacific war had also proved a testing time, and a testing space, for other disciplines and institutions. Extreme environments and opemtional distances, and the fundamental demands of logistics, required the Allies and the Japanese to innovate many scientific and technological practices. Just as medicine and botany were called upon to fight tropical diseases and insect pests, so engineers, anthropol ogists and geographers were called upon to understand local conditions and cli mates, and to work with local peoples whose traditional lives were changed forever by the experience. At the same time, the war played midwife to a host of new de velopments, not least in scientific intelligence and in chemical and biological weapons, which were to acquire far greater importance after 1945.

Klappentext

From the beginning of the war in the Pacific, Allied and Japanese forces were obliged to adapt familiar scientific practices to unfamiliar environments, to design new items of equipment (including amphibious vehicles and long-range radar), and to invent new ways of dealing with tropical diseases and parasitic pests. By 1945, the war confronted scientists with many ethical questions - concerning not only the use of the atomic bomb, but also the potential use of chemical and biological weapons, whose development was almost forgotten in the aftermath of Hiroshima. Looking beyond official histories, this book draws upon collective scholarship in several related fields in assessing some of the leading characteristics of the `scientific war' in the Pacific. Unusually, it explores aspects of the war and its impact not only in relation to America and Japan, but also in the experience of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Inhalt
Introduction: Science, Technology and the War in the Pacific.- I. The Scientists Go to War.- Combat Science: OSRD's Postscript in the Pacific.- The Smithsonian Goes to War: The Increase and Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge in the Pacific.- Malaria in the Southwest Pacific in World Warn.- The Machine in the Pacific: The Diverse Legacy of Technology.- The Role of Botanists During World War II in the Pacific Theatre.- II. The War Down Under.- Australian Universities at War: The Mobilisation of Universities in the Battle for the Pacific.- Australia's Mustard Gas Guinea Pigs.- Technological Transfer and the War in the Pacific.- Managing the Impact of War: Australian Anthropology and the South West Pacific.- New Zealand Scientists in Action: The Radio Development Laboratory and the Pacific War.- III. The Unseen War.- Canadian Scientists, CBW Weapons and Japan, 19391945.- The American Cover-up of Japanese Human Biological Warfare Experiments, 19451948.- The Role of Scientific Intelligence in the Pacific War.- The Useful War: Radar and the Mobilization of Science and Industry in Japan.