Introduction

Summary

In 1956, Oxford University offered an honorary degree to former US President Harry S. Truman. Elizabeth Anscombe, at the time a research fellow at Somerville College, organized a motion to deny Truman the degree on the ground that he had authorized the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombing of Hiroshima killed approximately 80,000 people, most of them civilians, and it wounded a similar number. In Nagasaki, the bomb killed about 45,000 people, again mainly civilians, and left a similar number wounded. In both cases, many of the injured died in the ensuing weeks and months due to the effects of radiation exposure (Miscamble 2011, 93–4). Anscombe’s motion was decisively quashed. Indeed, it received only four votes: her own; that of her husband, Peter Geach; the vote of her friend, Philippa Foot; and that of Foot’s husband (Solomon 2019, 226).