In the Pacific the situation grew so public and scandalous that in September 1942, the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet issued this order: No part of the enemys body may be used as a souvenir. due to the strong beach defenses, caves, tunnels, and numerous Jap suicide torpedo boats and manned mines, few Marines in the first five assault waves would get ashore alivemy company was scheduled to be in the first and second waves. As William Manchester says, All who wore uniforms are called veterans, but more than 90 percent of them are as uninformed about the killing zones as those on the home front.Manchesters fellow marine E. B. Sledge thoughtfully and responsibly invokes the terms drastically and totally to underline the differences in experience between front and rear, and not even the far rear, but the close rear. As I said, I am a peace-loving guy, a pacifist at heart but a realist in real life. These childlike drawings and paintings are of skin hanging down, breasts torn off, people bleeding and burning, dying mothers nursing dead babies. Sitting in stunned silence, we remembered our dead. Relatively inarticulate, most have remained silent about what they know. ". I think theres something to be learned about that war, as well as about the tendency of historical memory unwittingly to resolve ambiguity and generally clean up the premises, by considering the way testimonies emanating from real war experience tend to complicate attitudes about the most cruel ending of that most cruel war. Fussell's essay is an attempt to debunk the arguments of these critics, who argue that Japan would have surrendered without the Americans' detonation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. We have used it to shorten the agony of young Americans.. He was president of the History of Education Society and member of the executive board of the American Educational Research Association. . 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. The dramatic postwar Japanese success at hustling and merchandising and tourism has (happily, in many ways) effaced for most people the vicious assault context in which the Hiroshima horror should be viewed. If it is argued that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima was necessary to shock the Japanese to surrender, how does one justify the hasty bombing of Nagasaki only Arthur T. Hadley said recently that those for whom the use of the A-bomb was wrong seem to be implying that 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. People holding such views, he notes, do not come from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots. And theres aneloquence problem: most of those with firsthand experience of the war at its worst were not elaborately educated people. His essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" tells us why the United States needed to drop the atomic bomb and provides quotes from people with experience from the war to back up his claim. Rhetorical Questions Paul Fussell. Enjoy eNotes ad-free and cancel anytime. germany gives greece names of 10 000 citizens suspected of. During the time between the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb on August 9 and the actual surrender on the fifteenth, the war pursued its accustomed course: on the twelfth of August eight captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off); the fifty-first United States submarine, Bonefish, was sunk (all aboard drowned); the destroyer Callaghan went down, the seventieth to be sunk, and the Destroyer Escort Underhill was lost. A bloody woman holds a bloody child in the ruins of a house, and the artist remembers her calling, Please help this child! Unit Commanders will take stern disciplinary action. He thinks the A-bombs were unnecessary and unjustified because the war was ending anyway. The author of Drop the Bomb as agreed by saying that the Japanese have demonstrated a willingness to fight to the death. . English assignment help 24447 ) Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb? Theres no denying that Grays outlook on everything was admirably noble, elevated, and responsible. To intensify the shame Gray insists we feel, he seems willing to fiddle the facts. When the war ended, Bruce Page was nine years old. 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. Or even simplified. The people became prejudice. The debate is framed as binary, invasion or bomb. Or simplified." Comment. We didnt talk about such things, says Sledge. They would have annihilated the lot of us., The Dutchman Laurens van der Post had been a prisoner of the Japanese for three and a half years. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Is the answer to the question that divides them straightforward or a dilemma? He states in the book that He did not want to violate the widely held American moral view that war should be fought against soldiers, not civilians. The assault troops were chosen and already in training, Jones reminds his readers, and he illuminates by the light of experience what this meant: What it must have been like to some old-timer buck sergeant or staff sergeant who had been through Guadalcanal or Bougainville or the Philippines, to stand on some beach and watch this huge war machine beginning to stir and move all around him and know that he very likely had survived this far only to fall dead on the dirt of Japans home islands, hardly bears thinking about. knew better than did Americans at home what those bombs meant in suffering and injustice. They heard about the end of the war. Of the two the first was a tighter and better book. And not just a staggering number of Americans would have been killed in the invasion. So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past. what we had experienced [my emphasis] in fighting the Japs (pardon the expression) on Peleliu and Okinawa caused us toformulate some very definite opinions that the invasion . (A good place to interrupt and remember Glenn Grays noble but hopelessly one-sided remarks about injustice, as well as suffering.). 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. 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. For this was hell, the soldier goes on. Despite mixed reactions of the people of Hiroshima themselves, never does the author condemn the decision to drop the bomb, nor does he condone. In Before Hiroshima : The Path Towards total War ; Ronald Takaki discusses the various reasons on why America decided to drop the atomic bombs on Japan and why they felt like dropping bombs were better than having to invade. 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. Therefore, Fussell's argument is twofold: 1) that more Americans would die without the bomb; and 2) that Japanese civilians would be killed in large numbers during the planned invasion, meaning the bomb was instrumental in limiting the loss of human life. 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. . Fussell is even keener on exposing the euphemisms and illusions of others. Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast . List Price: $17.95. 2) Considering Fussell's discussion of the treatment of Japanese skulls during World War II, as well as all the other atrocities of World War II (the Holocaust, the Japanese invasions in Asia, the Allied fire bombing of Dresden), what do you think about the . Thousands of British assault troops would have been destroyed too, the anticipated casualties from the almost 200,000 men in the six divisions (the same number used to invade Normandy) assigned to invade the Malay Peninsula on September 9. Explains that paul fussell's thank god for the atom bomb is one of many essays written in favor of the bomb that aided the ending of world war 2. 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. 2. Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb? Is he really saying "Thank God for the atom bomb?" 2) Fussell: "The past, which as always did not know the future, acted in ways that ask to be imagined before they are condemned. ) Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb? Stopping Russia "[The U.S.] was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. When the atom bomb ended the war, I was in the Forty-fifth Infantry Division, which had been through the European war so thoroughly that it had needed to be reconstituted two or three times. 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. Just awful was the comment on the Okinawa slaughter not of some pacifist but of General MacArthur. By that time, one million American casualties was the expected price. 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. . More delay would have made possible deeper moral considerations and perhaps laudable second thoughts and restraint. Endowment Chairman Sheldon Hackney talked recently with Paul Fussell about the impact of World War I on the twentieth century. 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. When a neutron strikes the nucleus of an atom of the isotopes uranium-235 or plutonium-239, it causes that nucleus to split into two fragments, each of which is a nucleus with about . They would have annihilated a lot of us Fussell. But when we meet in Japan proper, our Army will demonstrate its invincible superiority. This possibility foreclosed by the Emperors post-A- bomb surrender broadcast, the shocked, disappointed officers of one infantry battalion, anticipating a professionally impressive defense of the beaches, killed themselves in the following numbers: one major, three captains, ten first lieutenants, and twelve second lieutenants. In the poem, Hiroshima Exit by Canadian Writer Joy Kogawa presents a flash back of these events that occurred during World War II. . [Every Japanese] soldier, civilian, woman, and child would fight to the death with whatever weapons they had, ride, grenade, or bamboo spear. . 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 believes that those who argue that the atomic bombs were not necessary are too far removed from the savagery of the war in the Pacific theatre during World War II. Fussell argues vigorously and, to my mind, convincingly that the bombing was crucial in cutting short the war and preventing the much greater loss of life that would have occurred as a result of a full-fledged invasion. 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