A collection of photographs housed at the Hoover Institution has recently become a source of a minor international controversy.

Ten photographs housed at the Hoover Archives purported to show the aftermath of the 1945 atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. The photographs showed scenes of devastation and destruction, including human bodies — a relative rarity in Hiroshima photography. Sean Malloy Ph.D. ‘02, an assistant professor of history at UC- Merced, obtained the photographs from the Hoover Archives for illustrative use in his book, entitled “Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bomb against Japan.” The photographs drew attention after Malloy put them on the Internet in late April, and received coverage in the French newspaper Le Monde on May 10.

Only one problem — the photographs actually depicted devastation following the 1923 Kanto Earthquake.

Malloy received information from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum on May 12 that convinced him the photographs were actually of the earthquake aftermath. Malloy pulled the photographs from his Web site and contacted his publisher, Hoover and Le Monde to inform them of the error. On May 14 both Hoover and Le Monde printed statements regarding the error.

Malloy explained that the photographs’ human dimension initially drew him to the photographs.

“They were, in many ways, quite unique,” Malloy said. “The vast majority of photographs taken are months after and do not contain people.”

“Certainly they were striking,” he added, “though obviously in retrospect it was too good to be true.”

The context in which he encountered the photographs also gave him confidence in their authenticity. The photographs themselves are in the Archives’ Robert Capp collection. Capp — an American soldier — described the photographs in an accompanying oral history as photographs from after the Hiroshima bombing. Prior to the controversy, the collection’s catalog summary read: “Sound recording of interview, photographs and miscellany, relating to the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Includes photographs of devastation and of bodies of victims after the bombing.”

Since the information has come to light, Hoover has substantively changed the last sentence in its entry on Socrates, which now reads: “Also includes photographs of victims of the Tokyo earthquake of 1923.” While Socrates is considered the primary search tool for Hoover, both the main entry cards and subject reports within the archives themselves continue to list the catalog with its prior, inaccurate description, as of yesterday afternoon.

The collection is relatively small, and besides the photographs of the human bodies there are only photographs of rubble, Capp and his brother, along with some of his insignia.

“With a little collection we tend to believe the donor,” said Hoover Assistant Archivist Carol Leadenham.

Hoover contains over 5,600 collections with hundreds of thousands of individual items. The Institution’s Assistant Director Richard Sousa indicated that the size of the holdings prevented a thorough authenticity check of all archived material.

“Our goal is not to authenticate every piece of information we get,” Sousa said. “But we do document, in each case, where it came from. We do not go through and cross-reference every single piece of material.”

“I’d be surprised if the Library of Congress did that, or any big archive,” he added.

Sousa also said Hoover will not be changing its policies for examining its material, and Leadenham said that the scholarly community is expected to help verify materials themselves.

“The basic principle of archival work is ‘caveat emptor’ — buyer beware,” Leadenham said.

Le Monde correspondent Sylvain Cepel, who wrote both the newspaper’s initial report on the photographs and subsequent pieces in the wake of the correction, said that a catalog description from an institution like Hoover implied the materials had been checked for accuracy.

“If you go to the Library of Congress,” Cepel said, “and you find some letter by Eisenhower, and it’s written on the box, ‘this is a letter of Eisenhower’s,’ you would not think this is not by Eisenhower but by Adlai Stevenson!”

“When I have the proof that Hoover has written, ‘these are photos from there,’ I believe them,” he added.

In the case of Malloy’s book, the photographs were incidental to his argument and were included after he had completed his manuscript.

“The argument of my book isn’t based on a photograph,” Malloy said.

Malloy added that the experience has provided lessons for his future scholarship.

“This experience has really highlighted the difference of working on documents without words,” Malloy said. “With a document with words, you can interrogate those words.”

History Professor Barton Bernstein, who was Malloy’s Ph.D. advisor, emphasized that mistakes are a fact of life for scholarship.

“While getting the picture wrong is a mistake, the argument is not affected,” Berstein said. “The fundamental fact is one of destruction and death.”

“In mistakes that get caught in scholarship, this is comparatively insignificant,” he added.