FREE ESSAY ON A COMPARISON AND ANALYSIS OF HIROSHIMA.

A COMPARISON AND ANALYSIS OF HIROSHIMA.

This documented discussion will address and include analysis, comparison, stylistic
contrast, purposes, personae, and argumentative techniques of Michael Walzer's Hiroshima:
An Act of Terrorism and Paul Fussell's Hiroshima: A Soldier's View. Additionally, this
author will include specific doctrine by President Harry S. Truman as relates to the
content. During his term in office, Harry Truman addressed the Congress and paid homage
to Franklin D. Roosevelt and pledged to follow his policies. Truman reaffirmed the allied
military policy of unconditional surrender and held out a vision of future peace achieved
through the United Nations and through continued cooperation among the allies. He held
his first press conference on the 17th of April and again reaffirmed his commitment to
Roosevelt's policy. (Pemberton, William E., Harry S. Truman, Fair Dealer and Cold
Warrier, p. 37). Truman's doctrines and policies are reflected here and are seen to
persist during a time where much devastation was wreaked in the name of a greater and
longer lasting ideal. The military and moralistic implications are indeed far-reaching
and reflected and expressed in various literary form, particularly poignant in Paul
Fussell's Hiroshima: A Soldier's View. The scene takes place in New York City. The
speaker states, In life, experience is a great teacher. In Scotch, Teachers' is the great
experience. This is a recollection of a whiskey ad, and brings to mind that experience is
common to those in the military and particularly those who were taught to recall that, To
close with the enemy and destroy him. The story, from a soldier's perspective,
illuminates the ugliness and banality of what war is all about. The story teller speaks
of a certain expression of contempt and ridicule which pervaded the American climate
amongst those who served and those who did not serve. Probably the most dramatic atrocity
was the atomic bomb. The open-endedness of the question is perplexing indeed. It is true
that, certainly in the opinions of many if not most military people, that the war would
not have been terminated as quickly and as efficiently as it was without the use of the
atomic bomb. It is also true that Harry Truman is prominently implicated in this, the
most horrific of events during World War II, but was the use of the Atomic Bomb at
Hiroshima a good thing? Many saw it is not because it killed so many people in one felled
swoop. At the same time, it ironically and confoundedly accomplished exactly those ends
which we, as warriors, were striving for with the very means that we were fighting
against, and that is brutality and dominance by a foreign power. Fussell points to the
clear existence of racism as a mediating factor wherein no Marine was fully persuaded of
his many adequacy who didn't have a well-washed Japanese skull to caress and who didn't
have a go at treating surrendering Japs as rifle targets. Why allow one American high
school kid to see his intestines blown out of his body and spread before him in the dirt
while he screams when he can end the whole thing just like that (Paul Fussell). There is
a dichotomic parallel or view, from the perspective of the soldier and the civilian. J.
Glenn Gray was an interrogator in the Counter-Intelligence Corps, and later a professor
of philosophy at Colorado College. Gray addresses the shame that was felt by so many
Americans and critical of the dropping of the bomb at Hiroshima. Fussell takes exception
to Gray's approach in that Gray maintains that we dropped the bomb without warning the
enemy. At the same time, he ignores the fact that 720,000 leaflets were dropped on the
city offering them advance notice and the opportunity to get out of there before we
dropped the bomb. The author makes the point that the act was tragic, and the
melodramatic accounts are indelibly imprinted within the memories of anyone who has
either been there, lived during that time, or read accounts of the episode. Clearly the
author leans toward the belief that the dropping of the bomb at Hiroshima was justified
and useful, albeit, tragic, and with the passing of every year, the implications are
magnified. He further speculates upon what would have been if the bomb had been dropped
sooner. Graphic and vivid images are called into account as the author underscores the
moral vagaries which pervade this story, and the soldier's view is spotlighted when, With
the eyes coming at you firing, do you shoot him in the foot, hoping he'll be hurt badly
enough to drop or mis-aim the gun with which he's going to kill you, or do you shoot him
in the chest and make certain he stops being your mortal enemy? It would be stupid to
expect soldiers to be very sensitive humanitarians (Paul Fussell). The author regards
Harry Truman as a democrat (not a Fascist) and had the experience of commanding a small
unit of ground troops in the war. But is his argument short-sighted? Certainly, Michael
Walzer indicates that it is in his essay on Hiroshima: An Act of Terrorism, who
characterizes Hiroshima as exactly that (an act of terrorism) and nothing more. To a
large extent, Walzer's essay on Hiroshima is a reaction to Paul Fussell, who himself
engaged in combat in the Pacific in 1945. Walzer writes of a code which military men live
by as do honorable men, and in the case of Hiroshima, this code was broken and violated.
Walzer says that Truman's first responsibility was to American soldiers, but he himself
was not without responsibility, and given the state of our political and moral order,
with which Hiroshima probably has something to do, aren't we all more likely to be the
victims than the beneficiaries of terrorist attacks? (Michael Walzer) Clearly, we are
witnessing two diametrically opposed positions toward the same act. Harry Truman spoke
noblistically about the war effort and the actions, I.E. Hiroshima, which he condoned.
The issue as espoused by Walzer and Fussell assume a somewhat different color when viewed
from the perspective of the President of the U.S. with the various political, military
and international (legal) considerations. Stylistically, there is a contrast between the
two authors. In the case of Paul Fussell, I would characterize his discourse as more
literary, although by comparison weaker philosophically. Walzer approaches the infamous
event from a greater philosophical and moral perspective, in which he (in my opinion)
succeeds in making his case. This is not to say that Hiroshima was necessarily a good
thing or a bad thing, but from a philosophical and moralistic perspective, Walzer appears
more erudite. However, erudition and literacy aside, there are serious implications and
pronouncements in the writings of Paul Fussell within his more dramatic and figurative
essay. He writes as a man who has known and seen battle and expresses himself from a
vantage perspective which is both practical and moral.