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Short note on war poetry
Short note on the effects of world war 2
Short note on the effects of world war 2
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Stephen Spender's "Epilogue to a Human Drama" and Toge Sankichi's "Dying" are poems detailing the destruction of two cities, London and Hiroshima, respectively, during or after World War II bombings. Spender wrote "Epilogue to a Human Drama," hereafter referred to as "Epilogue," after a December air raid of London during the Battle of Britain, which ravaged and razed much of England from Summer 1940 until Spring 1941. Sankichi wrote "Dying" from his vivid recollections of the surprise atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which decimated the Japanese city in less than a second. Both the Battle of Britain and Hiroshima were horrible, senseless, and vicious incidents that exacted gave tolls on innocent victims. Spender endured the Battle of Britain, and Sankichi experienced the horror of Hiroshima. The poets' responses differ greatly in style and perspective, but each work clearly defines the ramifications of atrocities such as those committed against Spender, Sankichi, and the populations of London and Hiroshima.
England's Royal Air Force battled Germany's Luftwaffe from August 1940 until May 1941. During that conflict, England was subjected to air raids day and night. When Hitler finally withdrew his birds of war, four hundred thousand British citizens had been killed, forty-six thousand had been seriously wounded, and one million homes had been leveled. After one raid, a relief team helped a woman who had covered been covered in powdered brick and plaster and was bleeding profusely. As they aided her, she repeated four words continually in a tone of quiet terror: "Man's inhumanity to man…Man's inhumanity to man…" (Jablonski 148).
Stephen Spender was in London for the duration of the bombings. He saw the demolition of surrounding buildings. He heard the droning of approaching bombers. He smelled the smoke of raging infernos. In his autobiography World Within World, Spender describes his mental condition during the raids as a "trance-like condition" and describes how he forced himself to think of places and things as merely mental concepts in order to avoid losing mental control (285).
Hiroshima's destruction came without warning. Japanese High Command, which was located Hiroshima's ancient castle, was alerted early to the approach of the Enola Gay by an observation post on the island of Shikoku. The High Command elected to sound no air raid warning because they considered it senseless to disrupt work in local armament factories due to a single plane (Bruckner 98). At precisely 8:15 AM local time, the fuse was lit inside the descending bomb.
An article from the Evening Standard, published on the 13th January 1941, states that ‘Seventeen women and children who were trapped in the basement of a London house damaged by a bomb....
In the short story "The Rite," Hiroko Takenishi tells of some of the horrors that took place during and after the bombing of Hiroshima. This story was a creative response to the actual devastation Hiroko witnessed. She may have chosen to write this story as fiction rather than an autobiography in order to distance herself from the pain. This work may have served as a form of therapy, by allowing her to express her feelings without becoming personal. She could accomplish this by attributing her own feelings and thoughts to Aki, the narrator of this story.
The book “Hiroshima,” written by John Hersey is an alluring piece coupled with an underlining, mind grabbing message. The book is a biographical text about the lives of six people: Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamura, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki, and Rev. Tanimoto, in Hiroshima, Japan. It speaks of these aforementioned individuals’ lives, following the dropping of the world’s first atomic bomb on 06 Aug 1945, and how it radically changed them, forever. John Hersey, the author of “Hiroshima,” attempts to expose the monstrosity of the atomic bomb, through his use of outstanding rhetoric, descriptive language, and accounts of survivors. He also attempts to correlate the Japanese civilians of Hiroshima to the American public, in hope that Americans
radio, it had been said that Hiroshima suffered of an attack by a few B-29. Many
In the book Hiroshima, author paints the picture of the city and its residents' break point in life: before and after the drop of the "Fat Boy". Six people - six different lives all shattered by the nuclear explosion. The extraordinary pain and devastation of a hundred thousand are expressed through the prism of six stories as they seen by the author. Lives of Miss Toshiko Sasaki and of Dr. Masakazu Fujii serve as two contrasting examples of the opposite directions the victims' life had taken after the disaster. In her "past life" Toshiko was a personnel department clerk; she had a family, and a fiancé. At a quarter past eight, August 6th 1945, the bombing took her parents and a baby-brother, made her partially invalid, and destroyed her personal life. Dr. Fujii had a small private hospital, and led a peaceful and jolly life quietly enjoying his fruits of the labor. He was reading a newspaper on the porch of his clinic when he saw the bright flash of the explosion almost a mile away from the epicenter. Both these people have gotten through the hell of the A-Bomb, but the catastrophe affected them differently. Somehow, the escape from a certain death made Dr. Fujii much more self-concerned and egotistic. He began to drown in self-indulgence, and completely lost the compassion and responsibility to his patients.
In John Hersey's book, Hiroshima, he provides a detailed account of six people and how the bombing of Hiroshima affected their lives. John Heresy felt it was important to focus his story on six individuals to create a remembrance that war affects more than just nations and countries, but actual human beings. Moreover, the book details the effect the bomb had on the city of Hiroshima. “Houses all around were burning, and the wind was now blowing hard.” (Hersey, 27).
The non-fiction book Hiroshima by John Hersey is an engaging text with a powerful message in it. The book is a biographical text about lives of six people Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamura, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki and Rev. Tanimoto in Hiroshima, Japan and how their lives completely changed at 8:15 on the 6th of August 1945 by the dropping of the first atomic bomb. The author, John Hersey, through his use of descriptive language the in book Hiroshima exposes the many horrors of a nuclear attack.
As expected, the Japanese denied Churchill's request. Two weeks later the Enola Gay was headed towards Japan with the atomic bomb on board. the bomb bay doors opened to the engola over Hiroshima at 8;15 am local time. Lightened by nearly 10,000 pounds, the plane lurched upward, then it seemed like a long delay and then a bright light filled the plane.
By studying these shadows scientists pinpointed the exact detonation point of the bomb. The second atomic bomb was dropped just three days later on Nagasaki, Japan. 1/3 of the city was destroyed and 66,000 people were reported killed or injured. A memorial now marks the spot where the bomb exploded.
The United States decided to bomb Japan in order to save American causalities. Harry Truman warned the Japanese that they should surrender but they didn’t. Almost 90,000 people died instantly with the two bombs. On August 6th, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. At 8:15 A.M., 80,000 people died instantly in Hiroshima. A blast equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT. Ground zero was as big as four square blocks. Thousands of people died because of radiation poisoning around Hiroshima. Radiation poisoning eats away your cells and\or mutates it. This can cause almost any cancer known to man. The Enola Gay will be forever remember in this bombing. The Enola Gay was a B-29 bomber that dropped these atomic bombs. On this plane, there was 12 officers\pilots on it. There was also 12 cyanide pills that they were instructed to take if for some reason they would’ve been captured. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped in Nagasaki. This wasn’t as deadly as the first atomic bomb but this made the Japanese surrender. They had had enough. August 15th will forever be known as V-J Day. This date is when the Japanese surrendered to America in World War 2.
Atomic Bomb The use of the atomic bombs on Japan was necessary for the revenge of the Americans. These bombs took years to make due to a problematic equation. The impact of the bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people and the radiation is still killing people today. People today still wonder why the bombs were dropped. If these bombs weren’t dropped on the Japanese the history of the world would have been changed forever. The Atomic bomb took 6 years to develop (1939-1945) for scientists to work on a equation to make the U-235 into a bomb. The most complicated process in this was trying to produce enough uranium to sustain a chain reaction. The bombs used on the cities cost about $2 billion to develop, this also making the U.S. wanting to use them against Japan. “Hiroshima was a major military target and we have spent 2 billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history- and won.” (3) The bomb dropped on Hiroshima weighted 4.5 tons and the bomb used on Nagasaki weighted 10 kilotons. On July 16, 1945, the first ever atomic bomb was tested in the Jamez Mountains in Northern New Mexico, code named “Gadget.” The single weapon ultimately dropped on Hiroshima, nicknamed “Little Boy,” produced the amount of approximately twenty- thousand tons of TNT, which is roughly seven times greater than all of the bombs dropped by all the allies on all of Germany in 1942. The first Japanese City bomb was Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. An American B-29 bomber, named Enola Gay, flown by the pilot Paul W. Tibbets, dropped the “Little Boy” uranium atomic bomb. Three days later a second bomb named ”Fat Boy,” made of plutonium was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. After being released, it took approximately one minute for Little Boy to reach the point of explosion, which was about 2,000 feet. The impact of the bombs on the cities and people was massive. Black rain containing large amounts of nuclear fallout fell as much as 30km from the original blast site. A mushroom cloud rose to twenty thousand feet in the air, and sixty percent of the city was destroyed. The shock wave and its reverse effect reached speeds close to those of the speed of sound. The wind generated by the bombs destroyed most of the houses and buildings within a 1.
Though they both occurred during World War II, they have their variances. In Toshiko Saeki’s narrative of the Hiroshima bombing, she fails to find her mother in Hiroshima, but is eventually shown what was left of her burnt head by her brother. She describes her brother’s psychotic post-nuke behavior as his “mind was shattered into pieces.” Despite many
A decade later on July 16, 1945, the U.S. detonated the first Atomic Bomb near Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was called the "Trinity" test and exploded with a force equivalent to 18,000 tons of TNT.(2) Truman then made the controversial decision to drop the bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The "Little Boy" Atomic Bomb exploded 1,900 feet above Hiroshima with a force equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT.(3) Bomb related deaths totaled over 140,000. Then three days later on August 9, 1945, the "Fat Man" Atomic Bomb exploded 1,650 feet over Nagasaki with a yield equivalent to 22,000 tons of TNT.(4) A little over 70,000 died in Nagasaki by the end of 1945 from the effects of the b...
In his essay "Hiroshima," John Berger examines the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. As he flips through the pages of the book Unforgettable Fire, he begins to relay his own views on the dropping of the A-bomb. Berger suggests his belief that it was an act of terrorism on the Japanese.
“General Description of Damage Caused by the Atomic Explosions.” The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 11-31.