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The effects of the atomic bomb
The effects of the atomic bomb
Atomic bomb in ww2 impact
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1862 versus 1945 War is War
In reading both Whitman's "Civil War Diary" and Hachiya's "Hiroshima Diary" the suffering of humanity and the aftermath of war remain the same: the people suffer, the lands are destroyed and life is never the same.
Through daily entries in "Civil War Diary," Whitman virtually pens his thoughts as they occur, writing his vivid and heart wrenching observations. In "Hiroshima Diary," Hachiya's memories are similar to those of Whitman in the manner that they have affected his life and that of his fellow country-men. Despite over 80 years between the time of these writings, and the vast cultural differences between the two authors and their countries, the shock, the fear, and the sadness depicted were a direct parallel.
In "Hiroshima Diary" by Michihiko Hachiya, the author describes the wartime use of a "500 ton bomb" and later, upon learning that it was no such thing, refers to the atomic bomb as the "new weapon" used to destroy the city of Hiroshima. The Doctor's memoirs begin two days after the atom bomb was dropped this because of his having been injured as a result of the event.
At the actual time of the dropping of the A-bomb, Doctor Hachiya was at home resting after a rough night at the nearby hospital where he held the position of Director and Attending Physician. The affects of the bomb sent the Doctor to his knees; then, upon looking out the window, he was taken aback by a strong light that quickly turned into an eerie, dark haze. This aftermath, as seen in his garden quickly spread to the interior of his home which was also severely damaged by the quaking of the earth. Within moments the doctor became a victim of this tragic event, quite the opposite of his normal role as a healer. He goes from the calming medical doctor to a patient bleeding and in panic over what might have happened to his beloved wife. Within moments of his fearful calling out, Doctor Hachiya locates his wife whose only ability is to gesture to him. Together they seek a way out of the shaking house before it collapses. Once into the street Doctor Hachiya becomes overwhelmed by weakness and is unable to continue on; he tells his wife to go on and try to get help.
Brian Turner's "The Hurt Locker" captures his personal and painful experiences during his time spent in war and furthermore, express the tragic events he witnessed. Brian Turner's poem is miraculously able to gather multiple first hand accounts of tragic, gory, and devastating moments inside a war zone and project them on to a piece of paper for all to read. He allows the audience of his work to partially understand what hell he himself and all combat veterans have endured. Although heartbreaking, it is a privilege to be taken inside "The Hurt Locker" of a man who saw too many things that should not ever be witnessed by anybody. Turner's words bring to life what many have buried deep inside them which subsequently is one of the major underlying problems facing combat veterans today. Reading this poem, I could not help but wonder what the long term effects of war are on a human being, if it is worth the pain, and how does a combat veteran function properly in a society that is unfamiliar with their experiences?
Imagine living in such a time period, where thousands of children are confused and families are scared. That is what life was like during World War II. In the story, “Keeping Memory Alive”, the author, Elie Wiesel, discussed why remembering the concentration camps is important. “The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family” by Yoshiko Uchida describes daily life in the internment camps. Both stories are connected by sharing their feelings about the unfair treatment received during World War II in the 1940s.
Angelina Jolie said, “Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to windows, without it, there is no way of life.” On August 6, 1945 the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a small city whose death toll rises to 90,000-166,000. On August 9th, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, 60,000–80,000 . In total, 15 million people lost their lives during the duration of the Second World War. 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). Before the bomb, there existed few laws to govern the use of a weapon of this magnitude because of the complexity and modern technology that the bomb used. To address the fears of the use of the atomic bomb, new laws were created to govern its use. The atom bomb should have been dropped on Japan in order to prevent the further use of such a destructive force.
Through the shocking and troubling graphic detail of human suffering and the physical effect of radiation and burns caused by the dropping of the atomic bomb Hersey exposes to the reader the deeply disturbing physical impact of a nuclear attack. In the book when Hersey writes about Mr. Tanimoto helping people out of the river he uses the sentence, He reached down and took a woman by the hands but her skin slipped off in a huge glove like piece, to shock the reader with something a person would only expect to find in a horror movie. By him putting that sentence in the text Hersey exposes the physical effect a nuclear attack has on the human body and suggest we should never let this happen again. When the characters of miss Sasaki, a clerk in her young twenties who is crushed by a bookshelves that fall on her from the impact of the bomb and is severely injured and left crippled the author show that the bomb didn’t only affect people be directly burning them or by radiation but also by the structural damage. Another sentence John Hersey uses to expose the physical impact of a nuclear attack is, their faces were wholly burned, their eye sockets were hollow, and the fluid from their melted eyes had...
Julie Otsuka’s story, “When the Emperor was Divine,” illustrates what calamities an unnamed Japanese American family lived through during, and after being sent to an internment camp by the American government. The story takes place after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when America was engulfed in a rise of “yellow peril” emitting a widespread fear of Japanese people across the country. Every chapter is see through the eyes of a different family member and gives the readers details about how differently each character was affected by the events that unfolded around them. Rather than explaining what the characters felt, Otsuka used symbolism to enumerate the hidden themes within the story, such as with the use of the woman’s rosebush. In the fourth chapter, Otsuka uses the rosebush as a symbol of the family’s former lives, and how that freedom was stolen from them, never to be found again.
John Berger is a European writer, artist, and intellectual. He published “Hiroshima” which first appeared in 1981 in the journal New Society, and later in his essay collection The Sense of Sight in 1985. He argues that we should look beyond the statistics to see the reality of the events that occurred during the bombing of Hiroshima. As Berger declared, “I refrain from giving the statistics: how many hundreds of thousands of dead, how many injured, how many deformed children” (Berger 11). The...
Japanese Emperor Hirohito once said, “The fruits of our victory are tumbling into our mouths too quickly” (Hirohito 1942). During WWII the POW’s in Japan and the interned Japanese-Americans suffered different yet very similar internal strife because of the physical mistreatment and emotional torment of the camps. The disastrous events of the war brought the whole world to their knees in the sense that once it was over billions of lives had been lost.
The purpose of the autobiography was to inform readers about the conditions that the innocent Americans in the camps had to face because of the bombings on Pearl Harbor. These internment camps are not well known in American and world history. Although the internees of the internment camp were not abused and killed like those in Nazi-Germany’s camps, the people were still mistreated for no reason. The story connects with Keep Memory Alive because had American-born citizens spoke out against these camps, the camps would not have existed. People were silent and allowed these camps to happen. As Elie Wiesel said in “Keep Memory Alive,” “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the
When the American bomber Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, it not only caused the end of the war, but also changed the 20th Century forever. Lives were effected all over the world. In John Hersey’s Hiroshima, he tells the story of six survivors and their struggling journey after the worlds first active atomic bomb was dropped on August 6th, 1946. On the morning of the bombing what had saved each character was a change or delay in their normal routine. The retaliation of war isn’t always aimed at the people fight the war but more so at the country’s citizens.
The most meaningful part of this trip is that visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The survivor—Keiko-san—used her own experience to express the pain and reflection from the atomic bombing. When she described the image she saw at that moment, I had vivid image in my mind. “ Would you hate America?”, a student asked. “We didn’t hate America, but we hated the American president at that time and hated the persons who did that” Keiko-san said. I was surprised that Keiko-san answered the question with the sadness and helpless. Indeed, who wants to suffer from such devastation? They are just the citizens and residents who lived in Japan.
While writing this paper, as well as while presenting it orally, my overall goal is to present to my audience a different perspective on war literature. In other words, I want my audience to learn that war literature serves a coping mechanism for both those who have experienced war and for those who have simply experienced a similar suffering in life that forced he or she to question their faith and purpose in life. In fact, throughout my paper, I will describe how I encountered suffering on multiple occasions, as well as from time-to-time I began to question my faith and purpose in
Many war pieces express a distinct sense of truth, hatred, and anger that can be found in the style, tone, and imagery they possess. Incredible images are created in ones mind as war writings are read and heard. Works written by such writers as Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Tim OBrien really reach out to the audience by way of the authors choice of words and images that they use in their writing. These talented writers create very touching and heart-felt images as they write about the true occurrences, problems, feelings and emotions that soldiers encountered throughout times of war. It is by way of these writers words that the bloody truth of war is heard, rather than the glorified victories heard which overlook the pain that soldiers went through.
Collecting evidences, gathering recourses, and providing reliable insights of a historical event are certainly not some easy tasks to perform for an author who has no first-hand experience of such event. Nevertheless, it is even more challenging for authors to re-organize, recount, and represent traumatic war-time memories to a body of audience with no direct experience of the intensely dangerous confrontations, especially belligerent experiences that happened abroad. To convey the anxiety and trauma resulted from extreme violence, moral conflicts and physio-psychological damages without unconsciously marginalizing any particular historical event, authors who write about traumatic experiences must be cautious when they try to visually and mentally
August 6, 1945, during World War II, an American B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion took out 90 percent of the city and killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would die later of radiation exposure.
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.