Herseys straight, simple narrative technique presents the catastrophe in its raw form, including the voices of those who experienced the bombing firsthand. It was not theoretical or merely rumored in order to scare the Japanese. But even if my leg buckled and I fell to the ground whenever I jumped out of the back of a truck, and even if the very idea of more combat made me breathe in gasps and shake all over, my condition was held to be adequate for the next act. In his paper "Thank God for Atom the Bomb", Paul has put forward several arguments against those who oppose his stance while providing justifications from the literature to support his argument. ISBN-10: 0671638661. A senior US defense official said Tuesday that Iran could produce enough fissile material for one nuclear bomb in under two weeks. It would seem even more crazy, he went on, if we were to have more casualties on our side to save the Japanese. One of the unpleasant facts for anyone in the ground armies during the war was that you had to become pro tern a subordinate of the very uncivilian George S. Patton and respond somehow to his unremitting insistence that you embrace his view of things. 3 Pages. (LogOut/ The A-bombs meant, he says, a difference, at most, of two or three weeks. But at the time, with no indication that surrender was on the way, the kamikazes were sinking American vessels, the Indianapolis was sunk (880 men killed), and Allied casualties were running to over 7,000 per week. A public opinion survey of Americans conducted in October 1945 found 85 percent favoring the bombs and 23 percent willing to drop more; Truman was an opinion-shaping leader, but he also reflected the wartime attitude of most Americans. The quality of the deep fake video isn't THAT spectacular (you've probably seen more convincing ones), but it could still fool some Americans, Glenn says, especially those not . As many as 200,000 deaths were caused by Little Boy alone and many people would die of radiation for years to come. From his point of view, as someone who served in the infantry during WWII, the bomb saved thousands of lives that would have been lost if there had been a D-Day style invasion of the Japanese home islands. Others recounted how signs encouraging everyone to KILL JAPS! Herman Wouk suggests this obliviousness of both sides to the fact that the opponents were human beings may perhaps be cited as the key to the many massacres of the Pacific war. They saw all Japanese as monsters an this justifies the dropping of the. Even today I vividly remember the sight. The "we had no choice but to use the bomb" argument is most strongly presented in Paul Fussell's (in)famous essay, "Thank God for the Atom Bomb.". . The degree to which Americans register shock and extraordinary shame about the Hiroshima bomb correlates closely with lack of information about the Pacific war. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Thank God For the Atom Bomb and Other Essays at Amazon.com. Paul Fussell wrote an article called "Thank God for the Atom Bomb," seemed to be about how only certain people would understand why it happened while others are still debating if it happened because we wanted something cruel to happen or because that was an alternative to something less painful. Steven Pinker Will ChatGPT Replace HumanWriters? [Every Japanese] soldier, civilian, woman, and child would fight to the death with whatever weapons they had, ride, grenade, or bamboo spear. It would shock the American public and the world. I cursed the war, I cursed the people who were responsiblefor it, I cursed God for putting me here to suffer for something I never did or knew anything about. The Glenn Grays of this world need to have their attention directed to the testimony of those who know, like, say, Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher, who said, Moderation in war is imbecility, or Sir Arthur Harris, director of the admittedly wicked aerial-bombing campaign designed, as Churchill put it, to de-house the German civilian population, who observed that War is immoral, or our own General W. T. Sherman: War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. Lord Louis Mountbatten, trying to say something sensibleabout the dropping of the A-bomb, came up only with War is crazy. Or rather, it requires choices among crazinesses. . Just awful was the comment on the Okinawa slaughter not of some pacifist but of General MacArthur. First, it can display the fineness of his moral weave. Chapter 9, The Demonic Other, discusses the Japaneses opinions on American racism, and seemed to believe Americans disregarded every other race except their own. (Pg.26) We all know that all war is cruel. These bombs were thought to end the war between Japan and America before other countries could get involved. ) Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb?What role does his own experience of history play in shaping his views as an historian? You think of the lives whichwould have been lost in an invasion of Japans home islandsa staggering number of Americans but millions more of Japanese and you thank God for the atomic bomb. These leaders concluded that if the war continued without the bombs at least a million, In the 1940s there is no doubt that the United States of America was engulfed by mass anti-Japanese hysteria which inevitably bled over into Americas foreign policy. English assignment help 24447 ) Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb? Jones observes that the forthcoming invasion of Kyushu was well into its collecting and stockpiling stages before the war ended. (The island of Saipan was designated a main ammunition and supply base for the invasion,and if you go there today you can see some of the assembled stuff still sitting there.) Or simplified." Comment. Again, the Japanese had no knowledge of the bombs, causing even more devastating casualties. Fussell's argument resembles the standard defense of the bombings: dropping atomic bombs on two cities forced Japan to surrender without a costly US invasion of Japan and thus supposedly saved more American and Japanese lives than were lost in the bombings. John F. Kennedy. Former Pfc. As with theRussian Revolution, there are two sidesthats why its a tragedy instead of a disasterand unless we are, like Bruce Page, simple-mindedly unimaginative and cruel, we will be painfully aware of both sides at once. Already a member? The debate is framed as binary, invasion or bomb. Down there, which is where the other people were, is the place where coarse self-interest is the rule. His latest book is about American. Aimed at the reconquest of Singapore, this operation was expected to last until about March 1946that is, seven more months of infantry fighting. The U.S. government was engagednot in that sort of momentous thing but in ending the war conclusively, as well as irrationally Remembering Pearl Harbor with a vengeance. Hiroshima, he says, was "the most cruel ending of that most cruel war." Within seconds of reading you understand his claim that there was justification in dropping the atom bomb. To this end he quotes Arthur T Hadley as saying, People holding such views [i.e., that dropping the bomb was wrong] do not come from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots. These are the people Fussell is addressing. When its smell grew too offensive and Sledge urged him to get rid of it, he defended his possession of this trophy thus: How many Marines you reckon that hand pulled the trigger on? (Its hardly necessary to observe that a soldier in the ETO would probably not have dealt that way with a German or Italianthat is, a white persons hand.) Imagine living in a period in which the realities of war encased the world, and the lethal potential to end all suffering was up to a single being. Paul Fussell is a smart man with an abundance of experience. I believe Dower used these sources to present a shocking and accurate assessment of why battles in the Pacific were often ones of extermination between the US and Japanese forces. He makes this apparent with his title and with the experiences of other people. "This is not a book to promote tranquility, and readers in quest of peace of mind should look elsewhere," writes Paul Fussell in the foreword to this original, sharp, tart, and thoroughly engaging work. His most valuable pieces deal with the horrors of modern warfare and its literaturesomewhat extending and generalizing his powerful The Great War and Modern Memory (1975). (Its worth noting in passing how few hopes blacks could entertain of desegregation and decent treatment when the U.S. Army itself slandered the enemy as the little brown Jap.) Marines and soldiers could augment their view of their own invincibility by possessing a well-washed Japanese skull, and very soon after Guadalcanal it was common to treat surrendering Japanese as handy rifle targets. He begins his essay with a verse: In life, experience is the great teacher. Relatively inarticulate, most have remained silent about what they know. Two or three weeks, says Galbraith. The intended audience of Fussell's essay is peoplesuch as John Kenneth Galbraith (whom the author names in his essay)who believe that dropping the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II was not necessary. asset . Despite mixed reactions of the people of Hiroshima themselves, never does the author condemn the decision to drop the bomb, nor does he condone. The war was over, the story goes, and the US just wanted to demonstrate its nuclear capacity to the world. His sources supplement his arguments, none more so than John Tolands The Rising Sun: the, Dennis Kucinich, a representative from Ohio, in the persuasive text titled We didnt need to drop the bomb, posted online in 2015, addresses the topic of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. To this end he quotes Arthur T Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this answer and thousands more. If only it could have been rushed into production faster and dropped at theright moment on the Reich Chancellery or Berchtesgaden or Hitlers military headquarters in East Prussia (where Colonel Stauffenbergs July 20 bomb didnt do the job because it wasnt big enough), much of the Nazi hierarchy could have been pulverized immediately, saving not just the embarrassment of the Nuremberg trials but the lives of around four million Jews, Poles, Slavs, and gypsies, not to mention the lives and limbs of millions of Allied and German soldiers. This event is known as the dropping of the atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, the event that would begin and end the pain and suffering of millions. "A conservative cultural critic with a passion for nude beaches and the Indy 500 auto race, Fussell (The Great War and Modern Memory) explores some of his pet topics in this miscellany of essays and articles. Rooting them out became a bloody business which reached its ultimate horrors in the last months of the war. During the early 1920s the anti-Japanese crusade grew nastier (Marrin 63). Thank God for the atom bomb, and other essays by Paul Fussell. The japanese were nowhere near aware of what was going to happen that day, and they had no idea of how much pain and suffering it would inflict. A professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania whose speciality is the eighteenth century, Paul Fuss View the full answer Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. When the young soldier with the wild eyes comes at you, firing, do you shoot him in the foot, hoping hell be hurt badly enough to drop or mis-aim the gun with which hes going to kill you, or do you shoot him in the chest (or, if youre a prime shot, in the head) and make certain that you and not he will be the survivor of that mortal moment? His research focuses on the historical sociology of American schooling, including topics such as the evolution of high schools, the growth of consumerism, the origins and nature of education schools, and the role of schools in promoting access and advantage more than subject-matter learning. Experience whispers that the pity is not that we used the bomb to end the Japanese war but that it wasnt ready in time to end the German one. David F. Labaree is Lee L. Jacks Professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education and a professor (by courtesy) in history. Being aware of the segregation against blacks, the Japanese created propaganda such as books that illustrated the racism in America along with how the African Americans were treated. Many of those that say the bomb should not have been used are implying that, according to Arthur T. Hadley, it would have been better to allow thousands on thousands of American and Japanese infantrymen to die in honest hand-to-hand combat on the beaches than to drop those two bombs. In arguing the acceptability of the bomb, Alsop focuses on the power and fanaticism ofWar Minister Anami, who insisted that Japan fight to the bitter end, defending the main islands with the same techniques and tenacity employed at Iwoand Okinawa. The people became prejudice. The first was The Great War and Modern Memory. . Someone, please help this child. ., I was horrified indeed at the sight of a stark naked man standing in the rain with his eyeball in his palm. germany gives greece names of 10 000 citizens suspected of. and I never imagined anything or anyone could suffer so bitterly I screamed and cursed. The ad consisted of two eleven-syllable lines of verse, thus: In life, experience is the great teacher. . 08/08/2022 Ralph Raico. Bottom Line Thank God for the Atom Bomb is my second collection of Paul Fussell essays. The Alsop-Joravsky debate, reduced to a collision between experience and theory, was conducted with a certain civilized respect for evidence. One does, doesnt one? We have used it to shorten the agony of young Americans.. KILL JAPS! Among Americans it was widely held that the Japanese were really subhuman, little yellow beasts, and popular imagery depicted them as lice, rats, bats, vipers, dogs, and monkeys. He begins his essay with a verse: "In life, experience is the great teacher. TNR's The Book page reposted this "classic" piece by George Kennan on Americans and Russians rather than repost the very famous essay that became the basis for Fussell's Thank God for the . And second, by implicationit can also inform the audience that during the war he was not socially so unfortunate as to find himself down there with the ground forces, where he might have had to compromise the purity and clarity of his moral system by the experience of weighing his own life against someone elses. Whereas yellow was the color of illness and treason and the Japanese were usually referred to as yellow, the color white symbolized purity which stood for the American race. To this day, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still a source of pain and shame for those afflicted and for those who survived. Many of those who were on the front lines were not elaborately educated people. Customer Book Reviews. Summit Books, $17.45 (298pp) ISBN 978--671-63866-5. On August sixth, 1945 during World War two, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima and three days later, on August ninth, 1945 the second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, which forced the Japanese army to surrender.. Q. People have argued over the years if the atomic bombing was justified or not, and multiple points can be made on both arguments, yet I take it that the bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not justified. Namely, the importance of experience, sheer, vulgar experience, in influencing, if not determining, ones views about that use of the atom bomb. In speaking thus of Galbraith and Sherry, Im aware of the offensive implications ad hominem. The man of conscience realized intuitively that the vast majority of Japanese in both cities were no more, if no less, guilty of the war than were his own parents, sisters, or brothers. Fussell is even keener on exposing the euphemisms and illusions of others. The risks of delaying the bombs use, he says would have been smallnot the thousands of casualties expected of invasion but only a few days or weeks of relatively routine operations. While the mass murders represented by these relatively routine operations were enacting, Michael Sherry was safe at home. Chapter 8, The Pure Self, Dower explains the Japanese traditions and culture, along with the humiliation and discrimination the Japanese received. If the atom bomb was not dropped, many more lives would have been lost. What did he do in the war? Anyone who actually fought in the Pacific recalls the Japanese routinely firing on medics, killing the wounded (torturing them first, if possible), and cutting off the penises of the dead to stick in the corpses mouths. Dower crafts his argument using a variety of scholarly sources. 2) Considering Fussell's. From this, one recoils says the reviewer. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ". After the war he became a much-admired professor of philosophy at Colorado College and an esteemed editor of Heidegger. And of course the brutality was not just on one side. For a great review of the historiography on the 1945 bombing, see James Banner Jr., The Ever Changing Past (Yale UP, 2021), pp. What role does his own experience of history play in shaping his views as an historian? It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination. To experience both sides, one might study the book Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawnby Atomic Bomb Survivors, which presents a number of amateur drawings and watercolors of the Hiroshima scene made by middle-aged and elderly survivors for a peace exhibition in 1975. What role does his own experience of history play in shaping his views as an historian? The purpose of the bombs was not to punish people but to stop the war. But thank God that did not happen. The underlying assumption is that the war was something somewhat savage to imagine: He notes; the experience I am discussing is coming to grasps, up close and personal . On Okinawa, only weeks before Hiroshima, 123,000 Japanese and Americans killed each other. It is a peculiarly human activity. Please help! The Japanese were determined to win this fight; they would mobilize every Japanese person to suceed. Fussell argues that people who consider the decisions wrong lack personal experience of the horrors of war as seen from the infantry perspective, because their class privilege means that they have no relevant personal experience. The dropping of the bombs were necessary and fair due to the refusal of the Japanese to surrender, the millions of lives saved by a quick end to the war, and the warnings given to the Japanese. When the atom bombs were dropped and news began to circulate that Operation Olympic would not, after all, be necessary, when we learnedto our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. No one who knows what combat is like, he says, would argue that dropping the bomb was unethical.. Thats a bit of what happened in six days of the two or three weeks posited by Galbraith. There was much sadism and cruelty, undeniably racist, on ours. Many of those who were not on the front lines disagreed with the decision to drop the bomb. Why did Fussel "thank god for the atom bomb? What had I done to deserve this? Source: Paul Fussell, a World War II Soldier, Thank God for the Atom Bomb,1990. Textual evidence suggests that Fussell expected most of his readers to think that the American decision to drop the two atom bombs on Japan, landing in the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II, was ethically wrong. The veterans in the outfit felt we had already run out of luck anyway. President Harry Truman, in his speech, Announcement of the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb, supports his claim that the dropping of the A-bomb shortened the war, saved lives, and got revenge by appealing to American anger by mentioning traumatic historical events and. In general, the principle is, the farther from the scene of horror the easier the talk. The aim of war is to destroy an enemy who is trying to destroy you. He workedin the Office of Price Administration in Washington. Hes not the only one to have forgotten, if he ever knew, the unspeakable savagery of the Pacific war. As I said, I am a peace-loving guy, a pacifist at heart but a realist in real life. Wed been doing that for years, in raids on Hamburg and Berlin and Cologne and Frankfurt and Mannheim and Dresden, and Tokyo, and besides, the two A-bombs wiped out 10,000 Japanese troops, not often thought of now, John Herseys kindly physicians and Jesuit priests being more touching. Bottom Line Thank God for the Atom Bomb is my second collection of Paul Fussell essays. All Japanese must become soldiers and die for the Emperor. Sledges First Marine Division was to land close to the Yokosuka Naval Base, one of the most heavily defended sectors of the island. The marines were told, he recalls, that. So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us. Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast . Fussell is writing for an audience (readers of the New Republic magazine) that quite likely was born after World War II and has no direct experience with the war in the Pacific, or in later wars such as Korea or, more significantly, Vietnam. Indeed, unless they actually encountered the enemy during the war, most soldiers have very little idea what combat was like. He does agree that the dropping of the bomb was horrific and not morally right, but the bombs were necessary. The Nagasaki bomb was thus the trigger to allthe developments that led to peace. At this time the army was so unready for surrender that most looked forward to the forthcoming invasion as an indispensable opportunity to show their mettle, enthusiastically agreeing with the army spokesman who reasoned early in 1945, Since the retreat from Guadalcanal, the Army has had little opportunity to engage the enemy in land battles. In the essay Thank God For The Atom Bomb by Paul Fussell, the author pointed out the advantages of dropping the two atom bombs during World War II based on his personal experiences as a soldier in the front lines. This week I re-read Paul Fussell's nerd-famous essay on the ethics of war: Thank God for the Atom Bomb. Truman was not being sly or coy whenhe insisted that the bomb was only another weapon. History, as Eliots Gerontion notes. The experience is common to those in the marines and the infantry and even the line navy, to those, in short, who fought the Second World War mindful always that their mission was, as they were repeatedly assured, to close with the enemy and destroy him. Destroy, notice: not hurt, frighten, drive away, or capture. The citizens of Japan had never expected something as extensive as a bomb. David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing, Comments on the nature of the US system of schooling, big history, and the craft of writing. 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