| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War. By Michael D. Gordin. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. xvi, 209 pp. $24.95, ISBN 978-0-691-12818-4.)
This short book expands our understanding of how a number of military figures in 1945 thought about the atomic bomb before it was used and before Japan's surrender. New materials documenting the views of operational figures on the island of Tinian are especially informative of the attitudes of that subgroup of officers and enlisted men. The book also acknowledges that before the atomic test American leaders viewed the planned Soviet attack in August as a way to shock Japan into surrender. Unfortunately, the author's attempt to use the new materials as the basis for a larger argument concerning the way nuclear weapons were generally understood is deeply flawed.	1
Not surprisingly, those working on Tinian saw their work in operational terms simi lar to those governing conventional bombing. That the new weapon might be special was understood, but its revolutionary nature was not their central concern. As Michael D. Gordin demonstrates in detail, their task was to get it ready for use and delivery. That involved transporting, transferring, and assembling the various elements needed for the bombing and making sure all was in order before the Enola Gay took off on its mission.	. . .

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