Fiddick Lecture Series Presents Tsuyoshi Hasegawa on Friday
Published: October 19, 2009
Was it right for the United States to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II?
That’s the question at the center of this year’s Thomas C. Fiddick Memorial Lecture, scheduled for Friday, October 23 at 7:30 p.m. in Eykamp Hall of the University of Evansville’s Ridgway University Center. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a professor of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, will deliver a presentation entitled Were the Atomic Bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Justified.
His lecture is free, and open to the public.
“Because of the great strength of the atomic bomb, and the horrible consequences the Japanese people faced after its use, the question of whether the U.S. ever should have used ‘The Bomb’ has been debated for decades,” said Burton Kirkwood, UE professor of history. “Dr. Hasegawa is a widely respected scholar in this particular area of history, and we look forward to hearing his discussion of this extremely sensitive topic, and to the give-and-take he will have with the audience after his lecture.”
Hasegawa earned a bachelor’s degree from Tokyo University in international relations, and a doctoral degree in history from the University of Washington. Since completing his degrees, Hasegawa has taught on both sides of the Pacific with long tenures at the State University of New York at Oswego, Hokkaido University, Tokyo University, and the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he currently teaches.
Throughout his career, Hasegawa has received numerous awards and fellowships, including Ford Foundation scholarships, NEH and Fulbright fellowships, and research grants from the United States Institute for Peace, the Harry S. Truman Library, the National Council of Eurasian and East European Research, the Japanese Ministry of Education, the Kennan Institute, and the US-Japan Foundation. Out of these research grants, Hasegawa has amassed an incredible body of documentary evidence from archives in Japan, the former Soviet Union, and the United States to develop his scholarly writings, which have been published in Japanese, Russian, and English.
With over 30 articles and six monographs to his name, Hasegawa’s prolific writings deeply influence the study of all three national histories, and they led to the production of his highly acclaimed Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and Japan’s Surrender in the Pacific War, published in 2005 by Harvard University Press. This book received the coveted Robert Ferrell Award from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations the following year and has led diplomatic historians to reconsider the historic end of World War Two.
Thomas Fiddick served as professor of history at the University of Evansville from the fall quarter of 1963 to the spring semester of 2002. In the 39 years he spent at the University, he was a dedicated teacher, a productive scholar, and a tireless fighter in the cause of justice. His untimely death on the day of his retirement in 2002 stunned the entire University of Evansville community, especially his many former students. It was from the former students’ efforts in particular, with the support of Tom Fiddick’s friends and the University, that the annual Thomas C. Fiddick Memorial Lecture was established.
For more information on this year’s Fiddick Lecture, please contact UE Director of News Services Joe Atkinson at (812) 488-2562.
