The Collapse of Atomic Diplomacy…Again?

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The end of the Pacific War historiography of “Atomic Diplomacy” seems destined for a second round of debunking, after the 1980’s declassification of WW2 Ultra files, with what looks like a “Jon Parchell talking to Japanese scholars about Commander  Mitsuo  Fuchida’s version of Midway” moment. [1]

That is, an accepted American Pacific War historiography is about to be ‘up ended’ by Japanese language scholarship little/unknown in English language for years after its appearance. In this particular case, the ‘scholarship’ is a 2011 NHK documentary titled as follows:

 “Atomic bombing – top secret information that was never utilized”

原爆投下　活（い）かされなかった極秘情報

Original link:

http://www.nhk.or.jp/special/onair/110806.html

Currently accessible link:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xkev97

Atomic Bomb Pit #2 - B-29 BocksCar Loading Site
Atomic Bomb Pit #2 – B-29 BocksCar’s Loading Site on Tinian.   This was the plane that killed Nagasaki.   Japanese intelligence tracked it, but Japanese military leaders could not bring themselves to stop it.

The NHK documentary answers questions that “Atomic Diplomacy” has never bothered to ask.    Specifically “What did the Imperial Japanese Military & Government know about the American nuclear weapon program, when did it know it, and what did it do about it.”

NHK’s documentary lays out the following:

  1. The Japanese military knew of the Manhattan project in 1943 and started its own nuclear weapons programs (IJA & IJN) as a result.[2]
  2. The Imperial Japanese Military gave up these nuclear programs in June 1945. [3]
  3. The Imperial Japanese Military & Foreign Ministry were informed of the American Atomic test on July 16, 1945 and refused to believe it was a nuclear detonation.
  4. The code breakers of the Imperial Japanese Army had been tracking the combat operations of the 509th Composite Group including both A-bomb drops.[4] The Imperial General Staff was told of the special message to Washington DC for the Hiroshima attack, sat on the information, and warned no one.
  5. The Imperial General Staff repeated this non-communication performance for the 2nd nuclear attack on Nagasaki.

Not having Japanese language skills myself, I had a link to a 2013 English language translations of the documentary sent to me by an acquaintance.

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Sunday at the Civil War

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Last weekend, at the folklore event at the Museum of Texas Handmade Furniture, I was talking to one of the other participants yes, there were a good few 19th-century reenactors there, all in costume and mentioned that I wanted to get some good pictures of Civil War reenactors; some images that might be worked into creating the cover for the next book. I had been thinking of a combat scene, with an artistic effect to make it look rather like one of those Currier and Ives Civil War battle prints … only without the need of paying a bomb for the rights. The reenactor who was performing as a snake-oil medicine show entrepreneur, looked at me and recommended the Civil War weekend at the Liendo Plantation a blip on the map of eastern Texas some forty miles short of Houston. It was, he said, one of the biggest and best-attended Civil War reenactor events in Texas, with artillery and cavalry and all, on the grounds of a lovely and historic old plantation house … and it would be the very next weekend. A weekend where we had nothing really planned. I went home, looked it up, plotted out the drive … and said; let’s do it.

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Diseconomies and Dysfunctions of Scale

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Why are short-line railroads able to survive, and sometimes thrive, in an industry dominated by a few giant companies?  An article at Railway Age suggests some answers. These points are relevant, I believe, in other industries as well.  To excerpt summarize the points in the article:

–Short lines are formed with a much lower manpower cost structure that includes more-flexible work rules.

—Short lines are very effective at negotiating service and shared capital project business deals with their face-to-face local customers. That was always a hurdle when the corporate headquarters of a railroad like Conrail was hundreds of miles away in Philadelphia compared to sites like Cairo, Ill., or Kewaunee, Wisc.  

–Short lines are focused directly upon industrial development along their limited geography service tracks. They are not distracted by competitive locations that want their location to be the next job creation site.

–Short lines have a simple way to calculate customer profitability as a guide for managing their service responsiveness.

–There is an ease of doing business with short lines. The difficulty of transacting business has long been an internally acknowledged Class I issue. Local small railroads have successfully addressed this with local managers dealing one-on-one with local customers.

–The short line railroads have worked to grab growth opportunities. They developed local community and state railroad DOT programs that gave them access to development and rehabilitation capital.

Most of these advantages could, in principal, be achieved by the large railroads through improved organization design and better internal measurements/incentives. And similarly in other industries…but it rarely seems to actually work out that way.  Re the profitability-measurements point, the article notes that Class I’s have tried for decades to calculate and then share with their remote train crews information about branch line financials. The Class I’s even tried to create regional cluster profit centers that would better focus attention on local branch line customers and new business development.  The results were at best a mixed success.

and hence

Selling off or otherwise leasing “troubled lines” to a smaller company typically became the favored big railroad divestiture business process.

Any thoughts on similar factors at work in other industries?

The Inclusive Symbolism Crowds Out the Intellectual Substance.

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Good afternoon, dear reader. Jonathan Gewirtz and David Foster have invited me to participate in Chicago Boyz. I’m going to limit my presence here to occasional mini-dissertations on education, political economy, or transportation.

My first post is a cross-post from my primary web journal, Cold Spring Shops.

Inside Higher Ed’s Elin Johnson shares the bad news.  “Percentage of students who have met English and math benchmarks lowest in 15 years.”  The proximate cause appears to be a lack of preparation.

Almost 1.8 million students, or 52 percent of the 2019 graduating class, took the ACT.

Of the Class of 2019 who took the test, 37 percent met three of the four College Readiness Benchmarks, and 36 percent did not meet any. The latter number has grown over the past few years, reports ACT. Students who took the recommended high school core curriculum stayed steady in their readiness in English and math.

“As we’ve been pointing out for many years, taking the right courses in high school dramatically increases a student’s likelihood to be ready for success when they graduate,” said Marten Roorda, ACT CEO, in a press release. “Students who don’t take challenging courses — particularly those from underserved populations — may lack the self-confidence and ambition to do so, and social and emotional learning instruction can help them improve in those areas.”

I’d like to think that, oh, inculcating bourgeois habits and teaching the substance would work, but that’s not how the people whose salaries depend on them not seeing it respond.

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The Seemingly Unending Schiff Show

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I was going through my routine at Planet Fitness this morning, as is our habit three times weekly, usually around 8 of the clock; half-past at latest, for an hour on the elliptical and the stair-step with a cool-down on the recumbent. There is a bank of television screens across the middle of the gym, offering all the alphabet networks, plus CNN, Univision, the Planet Fitness channel, and something that has Friends and Seinfeld on rotation during the time that I am not watching any of them. (I have perfected the art of reading my Kindle while stepping and pedaling; after all, being able to read makes the whole exercise thing bearable.)

All the news feeds four or five of the screens had the same damn unending Schiff show; which is to say that interminable search for solid grounds upon which to impeach a sitting and duly elected president of the USA.

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