Science and the Pacific War: Science and Survival in the Pacific, 1939-1945

ISBN-13: 9781402002458 / Angielski / Miękka / 2001 / 352 str.

R. MacLeod; Roy M. MacLeod

Opis

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.

Spis treści

Preface. Introduction: Science, Technology and the War in the Pacific; R. MacLeod. Part I: The Scientists go to War. 1. Combat Science: OSRD's Postscript in the Pacific; R. MacLeod. 2. The Smithsonian Goes to War: The Increase and Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge in the Pacific; P.M. Henson. 3. Malaria in the Southwest Pacific in World War II; M.E. Condon-Rall. 4. The Machine in the Pacific: The Diverse Legacy of Technology; D.T. Fitzgerald. 5. The Role of Botanists During World War II in the Pacific Theatre; R.A. Howard. Part II: The War Down Under. 6. Australian Universities at War: The Mobilisation of Universities in the Battle for the Pacific; M. Freeman. 7. Australia's Mustard Gas Guinea Pigs; B. Goodwin. 8. Technological Transfer and the War in the Pacific; I.D. Rae. 9. Managing the Impact of War: Australian Anthropology and the South West Pacific; G.G. Gray. 10. New Zealand Scientists in Action: The Radio Development Laboratory and the Pacific War; R. Galbreath. Part III: The Unseen War. 11. Canadian Scientists, CBW Weapons and Japan, 1939-1945; D. Avery. 12. The American Cover-up of Japanese Human Biological Warfare Experiments, 1945-1948; S.H. Harris. 13. The Role of Scientific Intelligence in the Pacific War; F. Cain. 14. The Useful War: Radar and the Mobilization of Science and Industry in Japan; M.F. Low. Bibliography.