The material covered is Fussells experience in the infantry, contrasted with that of people who have no such experience. 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. Thats a harder thing to do than Joravsky seems to think. 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. knew better than did Americans at home what those bombs meant in suffering and injustice. Why did Fussel "thank god for the atom bomb? Thank God for the Atom Bomb, and Other Essays - Paul Fussell 1988 Essays discuss nuclear war, George Orwell, tourism, chivalry, nudism, the Indy 500 race, Yugoslavia, modernism, and modern American manners After Patrick Henry - Neal Q. Herrick 2009 Neal Herrick demonstrates, in a lucid manner, that government corruption is the predominant problem The dropping of the Atom bomb on Hiroshima is an extremely debatable issue with no right or wrong answer. There was much sadism and cruelty, undeniably racist, on ours. Many kept body parts, such as hands, as trophies. 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. 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. The degree to which Americans register shock and extraordinary shame about the Hiroshima bomb correlates closely with lack of information about the Pacific war. He begins his essay with a verse: "In life, experience is the great teacher. 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. 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. Or simplified." Comment. Anticipating objections from those without such experience, in his book WWII Jones carefully prepares for his chapter on the A-bombs by detailing the plans already in motion for the infantry assaults on the home islands of Kyushu (thirteen divisions scheduled to land in November 1945) andultimately Honshu (sixteen divisions scheduled for March 1946). 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. 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. And indeed the bombs were . Division headquarters is milesmilesbehind the line where soldiers experience terror and madness and relieve those pressures by crazy brutality and sadism. That is, few of those destinedto be blown to pieces if the main Japanese islands had been invaded went on to become our most effective men of letters or impressive ethical theorists or professors of contemporary history or of international law. The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion largely due to the physical characteristics of the people (Martin 31). But no answer came. The first was The Great War and Modern Memory . In Scotch, Teacher's is the great experience.". Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast . To begin, the Japanese soldiers have it ingrained in their brains that it is dishonorable to surrender. Again he writes: We existed in an environment totally incomprehensible to men behind the lines . 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. We were in a staging area near Rheims, ready to be shipped back across the United States for refresher training at Fort Lewis, Washington, and then sent on for final preparation in the Philippines. After the war he became a much-admired professor of philosophy at Colorado College and an esteemed editor of Heidegger. 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 . 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. 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. In Scotch, Teachers is the great experience. The main argument of the essay is based around social class and personal experience. 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. 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. A bloody woman holds a bloody child in the ruins of a house, and the artist remembers her calling, Please help this child! 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. Add to Wish List Link to this Book Add to Bookbag Sell this Book Buy it at Amazon Compare Prices. The citizens of Japan had never expected something as extensive as a bomb. He thinks the A-bombs were unnecessary and unjustified because the war was ending anyway. It would shock the American public and the world. 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. He does agree that the dropping of the bomb was horrific and not morally right, but the bombs . 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. 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. and I never imagined anything or anyone could suffer so bitterly I screamed and cursed. (LogOut/ Or even simplified. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. 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. My father was born in Hong Kong during the World War II period. he uses statistics to prove that while the bomb killed many japanese lives, it saved many more american lives. Thank God For The Atom Bomb essays. A deep fake video made by artificial intelligence recently circulated online, showing a fake President Biden announcing a U.S. draft for the war in Ukraine. And not just a staggering number of Americans would have been killed in the invasion. 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. 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. But thank God that did not happen. Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays by Paul Fussell. It was not theoretical or merely rumored in order to scare the Japanese. What role does his own experience of history play in shaping his views as a historian? More delay would have made possible deeper moral considerations and perhaps laudable second thoughts and restraint. This week I re-read Paul Fussell's nerd-famous essay on the ethics of war: Thank God for the Atom Bomb. So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past. We have used it to shorten the agony of young Americans.. One does, doesnt one? Paul Fussell appeals to Pathos Reasons that he appeals to pathos is by including the audience in his speech. . 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. The first was The Great War and Modern Memory. Stopping Russia "[The U.S.] was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. Question: 1.) Mr. 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 supported the idea that the war was going to end . They did not start the war, except in the terrible sense hinted atin Frederic Mannings observation based on his front-line experience in the Great War: War is waged by men; not by beasts, or by gods. has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. 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. The most spectacular episode of Harry Truman's presidency will never be forgotten but will be forever linked to his name: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and of Nagasaki three days later. 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. If the bomb had only been ready in time, the young men of my infantry platoon would not have been so cruelly killed and wounded. If around division headquarters some of the people Gray talked to felt ashamed, down in the rifle companies no one did, despite Grays assertions. 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. Thank God For The Atom Bomb4 Pages886 Words. 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. Down there, which is where the other people were, is the place where coarse self-interest is the rule. . Arthur T. 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