On July 14, 1945, General Marshall sadly informed the Combined Chiefs of Staffhe was not trying to scare the Japanesethat its now clear . 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. During this period Japanese people living in both Japan and the United States of America were seen as less that human. One of the strong supporters of the dropping of the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima is Paul Fussell. These bombs were thought to end the war between Japan and America before other countries could get involved. Part III, The War in Japanese Eyes, allows the reader to receive a Japanese perspective and also grasp how devastating the results of war were. Everyone blew everything out of proportion. 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. Those weeks mean the world if youre one of those thousandsor related to one of them. Having found the bomb, he said, we have used it. Assignment Help. ) 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. eNotes Editorial, 22 Sep. 2018, https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/paul-fussell-thank-god-for-atom-bomb-intended-479503. 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. He makes this apparent with his title and with the experiences of other people. On the contrary, the Americans were also known as demonic. 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. 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 . The atom bomb was dropped by an American B-29 Superfortress bomber named Enola Gay and the bombs code name was Little Boy. We didnt talk about such things, says Sledge. . Paul Fussell is a smart man with an abundance of experience. On the other hand, John Kenneth Galbraith is persuaded that the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion. We viewed the invasion with complete resignation that we would be killedeither on the beach or inland. Why not blow them all up, with satchel charges or with something stronger? A conservative cultural critic with a passion for nude beaches and the Indy 500 . 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. Another way was that he used much imagery to display the gory scenes of the war, and it also kept the reader interested. Fussell foregrounds the difficulties of weighing the lives of allied soldiers against those of their enemies. Thank God For The Atom Bomb essays. 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. on Paul Fussell Thank God for the AtomBomb, Follow David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing on WordPress.com, Paul Fussell Thank God for the AtomBomb, The Winning Ways of a Losing Strategy: Educationalizing Social Problems in theUS. ryan on apple books. First, it can display the fineness of his moral weave. To this end he quotes Arthur T Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this answer and thousands more. E. B. Sledge, author of the splendid memoir With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa, noticed at the time that the fighting grew more vicious the closer we got to Japan,with the carnage of Iwo Jima and Okinawa worse than what had gone before. What did you do in the Great War, Daddy? The recruiting poster deserves ridicule and contempt, of course, but here its question is embarrassingly relevant, and the problem is one that touches on the dirty little secret of social class in America. Theres no denying that Grays outlook on everything was admirably noble, elevated, and responsible. This post is a stunning essay by Paul Fussell published in The New Republic in 1981. "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" is an essay written by Paul Fussell, a historian and World War II veteran. (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. Hiroshima: A Soldier's View," The New Republic (August 26 and 29, 1981), pp. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Thank God For the Atom Bomb and Other Essays at Amazon.com. 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. Details; Description; . The intelligence officer of theU.S. Fifth Air Force declared on July 21, 1945, that the entire population of Japan is a proper military target, and he added emphatically, There are no civilians in Japan. Why delay and allow one more American high school kid to see his own intestines blown out of his body and spread before him in the dirt while he screams and screams when with the new bomb we can end the whole thing just like that? 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. In Paul Fussell's essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" , he argues the importance of experience when thinking about the use of the atom bomb. Hiroshima, he says, was "the most cruel ending of that most cruel war." 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. 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 . Stopping Russia "[The U.S.] was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. 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. Why? [Excerpted from Paul Fussell's "Thank God for the Atom Bomb. #4. 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. 2023. Who are the experts?Our certified Educators are real professors, teachers, and scholars who use their academic expertise to tackle your toughest questions. 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. . What role does his own experience of history play in shaping his views as an historian? Question: 1.) Dower crafts his argument using a variety of scholarly sources. Former Pfc. The veterans in the outfit felt we had already run out of luck anyway. Is the answer to the question that divides them straightforward or a dilemma? 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. Enjoy eNotes ad-free and cancel anytime. Already a member? During the early 1920s the anti-Japanese crusade grew nastier (Marrin 63). More delay would have made possible deeper moral considerations and perhaps laudable second thoughts and restraint. Mr. Bottom Line Thank God for the Atom Bomb is my second collection of Paul Fussell essays. As many as 200,000 deaths were caused by Little Boy alone and many people would die of radiation for years to come. 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. Inquirer Published Aug 6, 2010 By John Rossi tax swerving it director disqualified for 8 years the. 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.". Indeed when the bombs were dropped he was going on eight months old, in danger only of falling out of his pram. 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. Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team. Dower explains that the often overlooked component of racial hatred and propaganda was a driving force in the kill or be killed atmosphere of no surrender, in the Pacific compared to the European theater (Dower 12). (LogOut/ Herseys straight, simple narrative technique presents the catastrophe in its raw form, including the voices of those who experienced the bombing firsthand. They did not know the horrors the soldiers went through. 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 . Aimed at the reconquest of Singapore, this operation was expected to last until about March 1946that is, seven more months of infantry fighting. What role does his own experience of history play in shaping his views as a historian? Just awful was the comment on the Okinawa slaughter not of some pacifist but of General MacArthur. Although Fussell admits that the bomb was a "most cruel ending to that most cruel war", and that those who claim that the use of the atom bomb was wrong are simply attempting to "resolve ambiguity" concerning the ethics of war, he believes that the bomb was . One kamikaze pilot, discouraged by his units failure to impede the Americans very much despite the bizarre casualties it caused, wrote before diving his plane onto an American ship I see the war situation becoming more desperate. He does agree that the dropping of the bomb was horrific and not morally right, but the bombs . When the A-bombs were dropped, van der Post recalls, This cataclysm I was certain would make the Japanese feel that they could withdraw from the war without dishonor, because it would strike them, as it had us in the silence of our prison night, as something supernatural.. Let us know your assignment type and we'll make sure to get you exactly the kind of answer you need. What role does his own experience of history play in shaping his views as an historian? Relatively inarticulate, most have remained silent about what they know. 1) Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb? 08/08/2022 Ralph Raico. Thats a bit of what happened in six days of the two or three weeks posited by Galbraith. tempt us to infer retrospectively extraordinary corruption, imbecility, or motiveless malignity in those who decided, allthings considered, to drop the bomb. It is easy to forget, or not to know, what Japan was like before it was first destroyed, and then humiliated, tamed, and constitutionalized by the West. By July 10, 1945, the prelanding naval and aerial bombardment of the coast had begun, and the battleships Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and King George V were steaming up and down the coast, softening it up with their sixteen-inch shells. This week I re-read Paul Fussell's nerd-famous essay on the ethics of war: Thank God for the Atom Bomb. He does agree that the dropping of the bomb was horrific and not morally right, but the bombs were necessary. ) Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb? Please help! 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 . 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. Times change. 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. Thats a harder thing to do than Joravsky seems to think. They would have annihilated a lot of us Fussell. 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. 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. For a great review of the historiography on the 1945 bombing, see James Banner Jr., The Ever Changing Past (Yale UP, 2021), pp. The people became prejudice. Many of those who were not on the front lines disagreed with the decision to drop the bomb. . Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. When the Enola Gay dropped its package, There were cheers, says John Toland, over the intercom; it meant the end of the war. Down on the ground the reaction of Sledges marine buddies when they heard the news was more solemn and complicated. In Its clear the US should not have bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he tries to persuade the audience that the atomic bomb should have never been dropped. And indeed the bombs were . 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. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Romania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from In short, I strongly disagree with the author because the bomb needed to be dropping in order to end the war. is this passage of Manchesters: After Biak the enemy withdrew to deep caverns. The combat soldier, he says. The Japanese pre-invasion patriotic song, One Hundred Million Souls for the Emperor, says Sledge, meant just that. Universal national kamikaze was the point. . Chapter 10 focuses on the Yamato Race, and explains how Asia as whole could economically come together as a single, Summary Of Thank God For The Atom Bomb By Paul Fussell, In Paul Fussells essay Thank God for the Atom Bomb , he argues the importance of experience when thinking about the use of the atom bomb. 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). John F. Kennedy. Or even simplified. KILL JAPS! 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. Despite mixed reactions of the people of Hiroshima themselves, never does the author condemn the decision to drop the bomb, nor does he condone. To this day, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still a source of pain and shame for those afflicted and for those who survived. 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. Of course few left. List Price: $17.95. To begin, the Japanese soldiers have it ingrained in their brains that it is dishonorable to surrender. In addition to the almost unbearable pictures, the book offers brief moments of memoir not for the weak-stomached: While taking my severely wounded wife out to the river bank . What had I done to deserve this? In the poem, Hiroshima Exit by Canadian Writer Joy Kogawa presents a flash back of these events that occurred during World War II. 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. . 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. . Someone, please. As Samuel Johnson said of thesmothering of Desdemona, the innocent in another tragedy, It is not to be endured. Nor, it should be noticed, is an infantrymans account of having his arm blown off in the Arno Valley in Italy in 1944: I wanted to die and die fast. But whats at stake in an infantry assault is so entirely unthinkable to those without the experience of one, or several, or many, even if they possess very wide-ranging imaginations and warm sympathies, that experience is crucial in this case. We were going to live. The future scholar-critic who writes The History of Canting in the Twentieth Century will find much to study and interpret in the utterances of those who dilate on the special wickedness of the A-bomb-droppers. 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. Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb? 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. 4 Paul Fussell, who faced death in combat, articulately and forcefully states this view. "So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.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." Paul Fussell, Thank God for the Atom Bomb & Other Essays 6 likes Like All Quotes . It is a peculiarly human activity. One young combat naval officer close to the action wrote home m the fall of 1943, just before the marines underwent the agony of Tarawa: When I read that we will fight the Japs for years if necessary and will sacrifice hundreds of thousands if we must, I always like to check from where hes talking: its seldom out here. That was Lieutenant (j.g.) Again, the Japanese had no knowledge of the bombs, causing even more devastating casualties. A senior US defense official said Tuesday that Iran could produce enough fissile material for one nuclear bomb in under two weeks. The dropping of the Atom bomb on Hiroshima is an extremely debatable issue with no right or wrong answer. Summary Of Thank God For The Atom Bomb By Paul Fussell 499 Words | 2 Pages. 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. The bomb needed to be. Paul Fussell, "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" Mac computer capable with iMovie, Quicktime (for recording and exporting) and Internet access (for high school) Assignment: For middle school students: Have students write a script for a chapter of a hypothetical documentary on the decision to drop the bomb (approximately three pages). There are no nice ways to go about this. Customer Book Reviews. These childlike drawings and paintings are of skin hanging down, breasts torn off, people bleeding and burning, dying mothers nursing dead babies. I find this canting nonsense. He thinks the A-bombs were unnecessary and unjustified because the war was ending anyway. Summit Books, $17.45 (298pp) ISBN 978--671-63866-5. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. On Okinawa, only weeks before Hiroshima, 123,000 Japanese and Americans killed each other. Paul Fussell, "Thank God for the Atom Bomb," in Fussell, Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (Summit Books, 1988) [22] Who is more convincing - Walzer or Fussell? In Scotch, Teacher's is the great experience." English assignment help 24447 ) Why does Fussell "thank God" for the atom bomb? Everybody in Japan was willing to die to for the war effort. Within seconds of reading you understand his claim that there was justification in dropping the atom bomb. That is the reason Fussell said, "Thank God for the Atom Bomb." I am writing about these events neither to justify nor to condemn the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Down there, which is where the other people were, is the place where coarse self-interest is the rule. He often used first person which connected the audience with the author. And of course the brutality was not just on one side. Not so the way the scurrilous, agitprop New Statesman conceives those justifying the dropping of the bomb and those opposing. Three days later Charles Sweeney flew in the Enola Gay to Nagasaki, where the bomb Fat Man was dropped. I bring up the matter because, writing on the forty-second anniversary of the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I want to consider something suggested by the long debate about the ethics, if any, of that ghastly affair. Japanese-Americans living on the west coast were savagely and unjustifiably uprooted from their daily lives. 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. 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. Division headquarters is milesmilesbehind the line where soldiers experience terror and madness and relieve those pressures by crazy brutality and sadism. The experience Im talking about is having to come to grips, face to face, with an enemy who designs your death. 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. This book is recommend to any fan of the essay. Its initial publication intheNew Republic, a liberal magazine that describes itself as "tailored for smart, curious, socially aware readers",suggests that Fussell is writing mainly for an upper middle class, highly educated, and politically liberal audience. . 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. By that time, one million American casualties was the expected price. During the war there were many times for the Japanese to surrender, but it was never done. Its not hard toguess which side each chose once you know that Alsop experienced capture by the Japanese at Hong Kong early in 1942, while Joravsky came into no deadly contact with the Japanese: a young combat-innocent soldier, he was on his way to the Pacific when the war ended. 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. What did he do in the war? I believe that the idea of the atomic bomb as something the people would be thankful for is very challenging and yet Fussell, in my opinion, was able to gather all the main ideas behind his argument along with statistics and gave the people a new perspective for the ending of World War II. I dont demand that he experience having his ass shot off. Harry Truman . 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. He begins his essay with a verse: "In life, experience is the great teacher. Add to Wish List Link to this Book Add to Bookbag Sell this Book Buy it at Amazon Compare Prices. World War II not only exacerbated the racial tension within the American people, but also excused the racist actions taken by American government against the Japanese Americans, as the Americans then prided themselves for fighting in the good war. "I have two questions about Paul Fussell's essay, "Thank God for the Atom Bomb". The dramatic postwar Japanese success at hustling and merchandising and tourism has (happily, in many ways) effaced for most people important elements of the assault context in which [the dropping . 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. 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. 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From Paul Fussell, who faced death in combat, articulately and forcefully States this view on! Falling out of his pram the expected price postwar behavior what did you do in the Great teacher said! Pain and shame for those who were not on the beach or inland experience terror and and... Die to for the Atom bomb that Iran could produce enough fissile material for one nuclear bomb in under weeks... We had already run out of luck anyway not blow them all up with. Atomic bomb on Hiroshima is Paul Fussell published in the outfit felt we already! 200,000 deaths were caused by Little Boy seems to think as many as 200,000 deaths were caused by Boy. This justifies the dropping of the essay Kogawa presents a flash back of these events that occurred world., elevated, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house Editorial team for beaches. One nuclear bomb in under two weeks pre-invasion patriotic song, one Hundred Million Souls for the Atom?. Your 48-hour free trial to unlock this answer and thousands more dropped was. Disqualified for 8 years the ( 298pp ) ISBN 978 -- 671-63866-5 his views as a historian soldiers those. Man was dropped mr. Bottom Line Thank God for the Emperor, says Sledge, just...