He notes that thousands of allied soldiers died each week, and that the claim that "the Japanese would have surrendered if given time, so the bombings were unethical" ignores the consequences of such patience (4). 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. Down there, which is where the other people were, is the place where coarse self-interest is the rule. And Winston Churchill, with an irony perhaps too broad and easy, noted in Parliament that the people who preferred invasion to A-bombing seemed to have no intention of proceeding to the Japanese front themselves.. They are, on the one hand, says Bruce Page, the imperialist class-forces acting through Harry Truman and, on the other, those representing the humane, democratic virtuesin short, fascists as opposed to populists. But ironically the bomb saved the lives not of any imperialists but only of the low and humble, the quintessentially democratic huddled massesthe conscripted enlisted men manning the fated invasion divisions and the sailors crouching at their gun-mounts in terror of the Kamikazes. What role does his own experience of history play in shaping his views as an historian? English assignment help 24447 ) Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb? On the other hand, John Kenneth Galbraith is persuaded that the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion. But no answer came. 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. Steven Pinker Will ChatGPT Replace HumanWriters? that in order to finish with the Japanese quickly, it will be necessary to invade the industrial heart of Japan. The invasion was definitely on, as I know because I was to be in it. Why did Fussel "thank god for the atom bomb? We were going to live. . [Every Japanese] soldier, civilian, woman, and child would fight to the death with whatever weapons they had, ride, grenade, or bamboo spear. Source: Paul Fussell, a World War II Soldier, Thank God for the Atom Bomb, 1990 OFTHE BOMB AMERICANVIEWPOINT DOCUMENT D Stopping Russia "[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. I merely note that he didnt. For a great review of the historiography on the 1945 bombing, see James Banner Jr., The Ever Changing Past (Yale UP, 2021), pp. Rhetorical Questions He workedin the Office of Price Administration in Washington. In 1945 Fussell was a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the U.S . eNotes Editorial, 22 Sep. 2018, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/paul-fussell-thank-god-for-atom-bomb-intended-479503. This book is recommend to any fan of the essay. . He makes this apparent with his title and with the experiences of other people. The celebrated author focuses his lethal wit on habitual euphemizers, artistically pretentious. Please help! He often used first person which connected the audience with the author. knew better than did Americans at home what those bombs meant in suffering and injustice. asset . This week I re-read Paul Fussell's nerd-famous essay on the ethics of war: Thank God for the Atom Bomb. Kucinich supports the claim that the bomb was not needed to end the war, although some may disagree. tempt us to infer retrospectively extraordinary corruption, imbecility, or motiveless malignity in those who decided, allthings considered, to drop the bomb. These troops who cried and cheered with relief or who sat stunned by the weight of their experience are very different from the high-minded, guilt- ridden GIs were told about by J. Glenn Gray in his sensitive book The Warriors. To call it a crime against mankind is to miss atleast half its significance; it is also the punishment of a crime. Knowing that unflattering truth by experience, soldiers have every motive for wanting a war stopped, by any means. they supported the idea that the war was going to end . Fussell starts his argument with why it was necessary to drop the bomb. (New York: Ballentine Books, 1990), 1-22. . 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Still thankful for the bomb By John Rossi Some years ago, Paul Fussell wrote a controversial essay titled "Thank God for the Atom Bomb." In it, he argued that dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan was necessary to end the war in the Pacific. I wonder what became of him. On the contrary, the Americans were also known as demonic. He begins his essay with a verse: "In life, experience is the great teacher. 3 Pages. Fussell, a retired University of Pennsylania professor, is editor of The Norton Book of Modern War and the author of many books, among them Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays and the award-winning The Great War and Modern Memory. During the time of World War 2, as the bombs were being dropped on different parts on the country, they were not only killing the men that were fighting in the war, but also killing innocent civilians. Enjoy eNotes ad-free and cancel anytime. What does Fussell mean when he describes the bombing of Hiroshima as a tragedy rather . And of course the brutality was not just on one side. Paul Fussell. 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. 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. In an exchange of views not long ago in The New York Review of Books, Joseph Alsop and David Joravsky set forth the by now familiar argument on both sides of the debate about the ethics of the bomb. As many as 200,000 deaths were caused by Little Boy alone and many people would die of radiation for years to come. Unit Commanders will take stern disciplinary action. 1) Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb? In this book's title essay, he evokes the ethos of wartime sentiment without flinching from Allied barbarism, then proposes that postwar arguments condemning President Harry Truman's decision to. , even, he would insist, to men as intelligent and sensitive as Glenn Gray, who missed seeing with his own eyes Sledges marine friends sliding under fire down a shell-pocked ridge slimy with mud and liquid dysentery shit into the maggoty Japanese and USMC corpses at the bottom, vomiting as the maggots burrowed into their own foul clothing. ISBN-10: 0671638661. Fussell argues that an infantry assault on Japan would have been deadly and would have resulted in the loss of huge numbers of Allied troops. Format: Hardcover. Copyright 2023 IPL.org All rights reserved. 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 . "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" The New Republic - August 1981 by Paul Fussell Many years ago in New York I saw on the side of a bus a whiskey ad I've remembered all this time. he uses statistics to prove that while the bomb killed many japanese lives, it saved many more american lives. The editors of The New YorkReview gave the debate the tendentious title Was the Hiroshima Bomb Necessary? surely an unanswerable question (unlike Was It Effective?) and one precisely indicating the intellectual difficulties involved in imposing ex post facto a rational and even a genteel ethics on this event. David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing, Comments on the nature of the US system of schooling, big history, and the craft of writing. 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. Let us know your assignment type and we'll make sure to get you exactly the kind of answer you need. 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. 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. 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. Is the answer to the question that divides them straightforward or a dilemma? Analyzes how paul fussell, of "thank god for the atom bomb", believes the atomic bombs were necessary and the right course of action in ending world war ii. Fussell foregrounds the difficulties of weighing the lives of allied soldiers against those of their enemies. So many maimed. 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 . Japanese-Americans living on the west coast were savagely and unjustifiably uprooted from their daily lives. Thank God for the Atom Bomb, and Other Essays. . General Hap Arnold explaines his point of view on why he thinks using atomic bombing in war should be used only in the proper way. by Paul Fussell. Again, the Japanese had no knowledge of the bombs, causing even more devastating casualties. [Excerpted from Paul Fussell's "Thank God for the Atom Bomb. I yelled for medics, because subconsciously I wanted to live. The audience is the readers of the New Republic magazine. 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. Mr. 588 Words. Nor do authors normally write about such vileness; unless they have seen it with their own eyes, it is too preposterous to think that men could actually live and fight for days and nights on end under such terrible conditions and not be driven insane. And Sledge has added a comment on such experience and the insulation provided by even a short distance: Often people just behind our rifle companies couldnt understand what we knew. Glenn Gray was not in a rifle company, or even just behind one. . Hiroshima--. 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. Thank God for the atom bomb. 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. 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 . The first was The Great War and Modern Memory . President Roosevelt approved several orders and committees that specifically targeted Japanese Americans on the West Coast, while war propaganda was created to instill fear and hatred of the Japanese in the American people. Source: Paul Fussell, a World War II Soldier, Thank God for the Atom Bomb,1990. 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. In his article, Fussell makes this point in various manners. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Jane Runyon stated that some civilian leaders even declared the bombs a good thing. We viewed the invasion with complete resignation that we would be killedeither on the beach or inland. 28-30.] 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. KILL MORE JAPS! Herman Wouk remembers the Pacific war scene correctly while analyzing ensign Keith in The Caine Mutiny: Like most of the naval executioners of Kwajalein, he seemed to regard the enemy as a species of animal pest. And the feeling was entirely reciprocal: From the grim and desperate taciturnity with which the Japanese died, they seemed on their side to believe that they werecontending with an invasion of large armed ants. Hiroshima seems to follow in natural sequence: 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. Since the Jap vermin resist so madly and have killed so many of us, lets pour gasoline into their bunkers and light it and then shoot those afire who try to get out. ISBN-13: 9780671638665. 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. Chapter 8, The Pure Self, Dower explains the Japanese traditions and culture, along with the humiliation and discrimination the Japanese received. 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. What role does his own experience of history play in shaping his views as a historian? In the essay, Fussell argues that the United States was justified in dropping atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. He also argues that Japan was not close to surrender, and that although the devastation and casualties caused by the bombing were horrific, that opponents of the bomb neglect the equal or greater horrors suffered by the American soldiers, the Japanese civilians conscripted to fight against them, and the prisoners of war. The debate is framed as binary, invasion or bomb. 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. 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. I find this canting nonsense. Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. Assignment Help. ) Stopping Russia "[The U.S.] was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. All this is not to deny that like the Russian Revolution, the atom-bombing of Japan was a vast historical tragedy, and every passing year magnifies the dilemma into which it has lodged the contemporary world. Many kept body parts, such as hands, as trophies. He does agree that the dropping of the bomb was horrific and not morally right, but the bombs were necessary. The main argument of the essay is based around social class and personal experience. Most historians now agree with Fussell. And not just a staggering number of Americans would have been killed in the invasion. 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. site map real business rescue. The Hiroshima bomb, he says, was dropped without any warning. But actually, two days before, 720,000 leaflets were dropped on the city urging everyone to get out and indicating that the place was going to be (as the Potsdam Declaration had promised) obliterated. On the tragic day of August 6, 1945, US Air Force deployed the first atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. KILL JAPS! What did he do in the war? What was required, said the Marine Corps journal The Leatherneck in May 1945, was a gigantic task of extermination. The Japanese constituted a pestilence, and the only appropriate treatment was annihilation. Some of the marines landing on Iwo Jima had Rodent Exterminator written on their helmet covers, and on one American flagship the naval commander had erected a large sign enjoining all to KILL JAPS! atomic bomb, also called atom bomb, weapon with great explosive power that results from the sudden release of energy upon the splitting, or fission, of the nuclei of a heavy element such as plutonium or uranium. While many citizens of Hiroshima continued to feel a hatred for Americans which nothing could possibly erase, (117) some, like Mrs. Nakamura, remained more or less indifferent about the ethics of using the bomb. (117). Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy, the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war. 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