ハワイ大学での上映

4月4日、ハワイ大学歴史学部で主催していただき、上映会を行いました。
日本史や第二次世界大戦の歴史に関心のあるハワイ大関係者が参加してくださり、
上映後は、原爆研究に関係していた日本の物理学者はその倫理的問題をどのように考えていたのか、
ということなど、さまざまな質問をいただきました。

ナチスドイツ史を研究されているManfred Henningsen先生からは、ドイツの
科学者の責任をめぐって、いろいろとご意見をいただきました。
その後いただいたメールを、許可を得たので転載します。

Thank you for alerting me to your documentary. It would be important to follow up on the question whether the physicists in the three countries that were involved in nuclear research, namely the US, Germany and Japan, were ever discussing the ethical issues of what they were doing. I have the impression that they were primarily scientists which didn't care about anything else.
It is also interesting that some of the students in the documentary were talking about your findings in terms of Japanese pride concerning the scientific achievements. I found that disturbing because they didn't seem think about the obvious goal, namely that the Japanese scientists were exactly trying to provide their military with weapons of mass destruction.
In the American case, it played a role that the Nazis were engaged in orchestrating the Holocaust against Jews, though I don't know how much the physicists, many European and American Jews among them, knew about the details at that time.

The question remains for some post-colonialists whether the Americans would have dropped the bombs on German cities. If they had a ready bomb earlier in the war, they would have dropped it on any German city. I think its utterly absurd to say that they dropped them on Japan because of racism. The anti-Nazi sentiments were stronger than anti-Japanese racism in the US at that time.

Again, thanks for a very informative session.