Toshihiro Higuchi, Resident Scholar

Toshihiro Higuchi

Toshihiro Higuchi is the second individual this year to conduct research in Special Collections under the sponsorship of our Resident Scholar Program.

Originally from Japan, Higuchi first attended the University of Tsukuba on the Japanese island of Honshu. In 2002 he graduated with an M.A. in International Political Economy, after which he again entered the University of Tsukuba, this time in the Ph. D. program. During his second year as a doctoral candidate, Higuchi received a Fulbright award that presented him with the opportunity to study in the United States, something he had always wanted to do. In August of 2005, he enrolled at Georgetown University, where he is now in his fifth year as a Ph. D. candidate in the History department.

The research that Higuchi is conducting here in Special Collections is related to a portion of his dissertation work, a primary focus of which is the evolution of environmental consciousness in the United States and around the world. Higuchi’s thesis is that the fierce debate in the 1950s over the effects of radioactive fallout generated by nuclear weapons tests  (tests which presented the first instance of measurable global contamination and thus the first global environmental crisis) helped to inform later attitudes underlying not only peace activism, but also the environmental movement.

The Fallout Suits

One key aspect of Higuchi’s research in the Pauling Papers has been a study of a lesser-known component of Pauling’s peace work: the Fallout Suits. Filed in 1958, the Fallout Suits sought to utilize the court systems of the three nuclear powers (the U.S., Great Britain and the U.S.S.R.) to compel each nation to cease their nuclear weapons tests programs. The plaintiffs in these cases included well-known figures such as Pauling, Bertrand Russell and Canon L. John Collins, as well as an American housewife and three Japanese fishermen, all of whom were meant to represent differing perspectives on the dangers of radioactive fallout.

Higuchi delivering his Resident Scholar lecture, "Tipping the Scales of Justice: Linus Pauling, The Fallout Suits, and the Judicial Aspects of the Global Environmental Crisis."

Having retained the council of lawyers Francis Heisler and A. L. Wirin, the backers of the Fallout Suits had three goals in mind. First, they sought to obtain court orders that would compel the governments of the nuclear powers to release secret information detailing the hazards of nuclear weapons tests. Using this information, they hoped that the courts would, either directly or indirectly, redefine the risk consensus associated with nuclear testing, which would then lead to new directives meant to address these risks. The ultimate goal was a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons tests.

Philosophically, the plaintiffs argued that weapons tests were, in fact, illegal, because government agencies such as the Atomic Energy Commission had been granted powers that effectively rendered them autonomous and unaccountable to the rest of the democratic process. Furthermore, because tests were conducted without the express consent of the world’s population, and because the presumably harmful effects of testing (the plaintiffs argued that there was no safe dosage of radiation as it pertained to any potential impact on the pool of human germ plasm) clearly spread beyond the borders of nations, nuclear testing violated the constitutional and human rights of all individuals.

The U.S. government, acting as defendant in the U.S. filing, responded by admitting to certain of the plaintiffs facts regarding the potential effects of weapons tests, but also by submitting that the plaintiffs had no legal standing to sue. The defense argued that the question of weapons testing was not judiciable and that testing, like war, was in fact protected by the constitution.

The Fallout Suits did go to trial in the U.S. and the U.K., and in both instances the courts sided with the defense. In the U.S. the judges ruled according to a narrow interpretation of tort law; in simplest terms, because none of the individual plaintiffs could prove that they themselves had been harmed by nuclear weapons tests, none of those individuals had a right to sue. (A group of Marshall Islanders, on the other hand, who had been manifestly harmed by tests in the south Pacific, were not allowed to sue because of their status in the U.S. as non-resident aliens.) A similar interpretation was upheld in Great Britain and the Suits never made it to trial in the Soviet Union.

Higuchi with Judith and Peter Freeman, sponsors of the Resident Scholar Program.

Though the Fallout Suits did not succeed, Higuchi argues that they did help establish a template for later successful activism. In a literal sense, Vietnam War-era litigation concerning the harmful effects of Agent Orange did gain traction as did other efforts carried out by the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Furthermore, in terms of constructing a narrative powerful enough to grasp the imagination of large groups of people, Higuchi points out that Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962, just four years after the Fallout Suits were filed, draws many comparisons between the deleterious effects of DDT and earlier claims regarding nuclear fallout issued by Pauling and others.  Clearly, while the Suits themselves did not meet with success, their impact was felt for many years to follow.

To learn more about the Fallout Suits, read this draft press release announcing the suits, as included on our website Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement: A Documentary History.  A profile of Dr. Burt Davis, an earlier recipient of the Resident Scholarship, is available here.

Creating The Pauling Catalogue: More than One-Thousand Illustrations

In 1931 Linus Pauling was the first recipient of the American Chemical Society's A.C. Langmuir Award, an annual recognition of the best young chemists in the U.S. This cartoon was published in the Double Bond, Jr., a satirical newspaper produced in conjunction with the A.C.S. meeting that year.

[Part 5 of 9] The Pauling Catalogue contains over 1,200 illustrations in its 1,700+ pages of text. The long process underlying the selection of these images was based upon two fundamental guiding principles.

First, it was the goal of the editorial team that The Pauling Catalogue be used to display certain of the more important documents and artifacts held within the Pauling Papers.  Accordingly, annotated reproductions of such noteworthy items as Rosalind Franklin’s famous “Photo 51,” Watson and Crick’s original DNA structure typescript, and Pauling’s legendary “peace placard” are all included.

Of near equal importance was the desire to use image descriptions to tell some of the fascinating but less well-known stories imbued within the Pauling biography.  Part of the archivist’s mission is to provide context for the documents held within their collections.  The editorial team sought to achieve this end by composing extensive captions for a number of illustrations that, on the surface, would not seem to be altogether very interesting.

Two fascinating examples are included below. From the Pauling publications bibliography in Volume I: From the Pauling Honors and Awards listings in Volume III:

In certain other instances, custom illustrations were created by the project team for exclusive inclusion in The Pauling Catalogue.  This composite view of many of Pauling’s medals, plaques and certificates is a perfect example:

The source images for this illustration are freely available on the web at the Linus Pauling: Awards, Honors and Medals website. The composite image was created using an Excel spreadsheet and a custom PerlScript, which randomized the images. Once randomized, the images were then imported into an InDesign grid with this final composite graphic as the output. Image courtesy of Eric Arnold.

Finally, image series were included throughout the publication to great effect.  The following example is particularly interesting in its depiction of the wide-variety of content included in the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers:

An example of the remarkable diversity of content- and format-types in the Pauling collection.

Illustrations were selected, scanned and organized using Excel spreadsheets. Each spreadsheet contained information on a selected item’s catalogue identification number, its location as an illustration within the published catalogue and the caption text written for the image.

An example of the Excel spreadsheets used to establish intellectual control over the 1,200+ illustrations used in The Pauling Catalogue.

Documents were scanned with a goal of achieving a minimum print resolution of 300 dots per inch, meaning that certain very small artifacts (slides, for example) required very high scan resolutions – upwards of 2400 dots per inch. As a result, the final tally of 1,200+ image scans required a sizeable amount of storage space – more than 36 gigabytes in total.

A peek at the file-directory structure for a portion of the images scanned and used in The Pauling Catalogue

The Pauling Catalogue

Close to 350 hours were logged discerning and negotiating copyright permissions for items not controlled by the OSU Libraries. This process was made all the more difficult by the fact that many of the items in the Pauling photo collection are classified as “orphan works,” e.g. images for which little or nothing is known concerning copyright provenance.  The project team’s rule of thumb was to conduct due diligence in pursuing contact information for any illustration, no matter how old.

In other instances, archival context was added to image scans to enhance a given illustration’s fair-use characteristics.

Lastly, a small number of illustrations were purchased for one-time print use. (Which means, unfortunately, that we can’t show them off here!)

The Pauling Catalogue is available for purchase at http://paulingcatalogue.org