Martin J. Sherwin, Pulitzer-winning scholar, dead at 84,

NEW YORK – Martin J. Sherwin, a starring student of atomic weapons who successful “A World Destroyed” challenged enactment for the U.S. bombing of Japan and spent much than 2 decades researching the pioneering physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer for the Pulitzer Prize-winning “American Prometheus,” has died.

Sherwin died Wednesday astatine his location successful Washington, D.C., according to his person Andrew Hartman, a prof of past astatine Illinois State University. He was 84 and had been battling lung cancer. Kai Bird, a adjacent person and the co-author of “American Prometheus,” called him “probably the preeminent historiographer of the atomic age.”

“When we started moving connected ‘American Prometheus’ helium told maine helium had tons of research, but a fewer gaps,” Bird told The Associated Press connected Saturday. “When I began going done each the materials I couldn’t find immoderate gaps.”

Sherwin was a New York City autochthonal whose involvement successful atomic probe dated backmost to his undergraduate years astatine Dartmouth College, erstwhile helium spent a summertime moving astatine a uranium excavation retired West. Sherwin’s ties to the arms contention betwixt the U.S. and the Soviet Union became frighteningly idiosyncratic during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis,. He was a inferior serviceman successful the Navy and was told of plans to evacuate from their basal successful San Diego to a distant determination successful Baja California, Mexico.

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“The rationale was to disperse subject craft beyond the scope of Soviet missiles,” helium wrote successful “Gambling With Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis,” which came retired past year. “Some inferior officers — each of america bachelors — joked that the beaches of Baja ‘would beryllium a delightful spot to die.’”

He was champion known for “American Prometheus,” published successful 2005 and victor of the Pulitzer for biography. The publication was wide praised arsenic a broad and invaluable survey of the alleged “father of the atomic bomb” who aboriginal had his telephones tapped and his information clearance revoked during the McCarthy epoch of the 1950s arsenic helium advocated atomic containment and opposed the improvement of the hydrogen bomb.

Sherwin began moving connected the publication successful the precocious 1970s with an hours-long horseback thrust to the mountainside ranch successful New Mexico wherever Oppenheimer erstwhile lived. He continued implicit the adjacent 2 decades arsenic helium accumulated tens of thousands of pages of research, from FBI files to backstage correspondence to interviews with those who knew Oppenheimer. Bird, whom helium had befriended successful the 1990s and yet brought successful to help, joked that Sherwin had travel down with “biographer’s disease,” the inability to cognize erstwhile it was clip to halt researching and statesman writing.

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Pulitzer judges cited Sherwin and Bird for their “rich evocation of America astatine midcentury” and called “American Prometheus” a “new and compelling representation of a brilliant, ambitious, analyzable and flawed antheral profoundly connected to its large events — the Depression, World War II and the Cold War.”

Sherwin was besides a fashionable teacher and lecturer who taught astatine Princeton University, George Mason University and, for overmuch of his career, Tufts University, wherever helium founded the Nuclear Age History Center. At Princeton, helium was an advisor to the author-journalist Eric Schlosser and mentored Katrina vanden Heuvel, present editorial manager and steadfast of the wide play The Nation, for which Sherwin was a contributor and served connected the committee of directors.

Sherwin’s archetypal book, “A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies,” came retired successful 1975 and was a Pulitzer finalist. The New York Times praised the publication for its unprecedented assistance connected specified questions arsenic whether the U.S. needed atomic weapons to decision Japan successful World War II (Sherwin contended President Truman’s determination to weaponry Hiroshima and Nagasaki was based much connected intimidating the Russians) and wherefore the U.S. chose not to stock its atomic improvement with the Soviet Union erstwhile they were World War II allies.

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In the mid-1990s, Sherwin was among the advisers for a planned Smithsonian grounds astir the 50th day of the bombing of Japan that was canceled aft veterans organizations and dozens of members of Congress objected to what they considered an anti-U.S. bias. Instead, the Smithsonian lone displayed the Enola Gay, the level from which the U.S. dropped a atomic weaponry connected Hiroshima.

“In the United States, the corporate representation of World War II sees the warfare arsenic ‘our finest hour,’" helium wrote successful a 2003 variation of “A World Destroyed.”

“America without that representation is unimaginable to astir members of the procreation that fought the warfare and to those successful consequent generations who person defined their presumption of the satellite and their governmental lives arsenic a reflections of this image.”

According to Kai Bird, helium and Sherwin had been moving connected a connection for a caller publication adjacent though helium was severely weakened by his crab treatment. Sherwin wanted to archer the bonzer but existent communicative of a unit of B-29 bombers who were captured disconnected the seashore of Japan astatine the extremity of World War II and saved from execution by an English-speaking Japanese commandant who brought them to Hiroshima truthful they could spot for themselves the devastation from the precocious dropped atom bomb.

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“He had been sitting connected his communicative for a precise agelong time, backmost to 1975 erstwhile helium interviewed 1 of the B-29 unit members,” Bird said. “He was truly excited astir this, and I'm trying to spot if I tin crook this into a publication proposal. On the time helium died helium was editing that proposal. Even arsenic his assemblage was giving out, helium was inactive funny and his caput was alert.”

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