Essay Database

On August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped one of the world's first nuclear bombs on Hiroshima. Three days later, another plane dropped a second bomb on the city of Nagasaki. These two bombs killed roughly 200,000 Japanese civilians, and, according to Paul Fussell, they ended the war, but did they really? Were the nuclear bombs actually necessary? The answer to this question is, undoubtedly, no. The United States had no right or reason to cast the world …

…soldiers in the war, but what he doesn't realize is that he himself, being a soldier, spent those wartime years being brainwashed by propaganda. He is biased, and perhaps even somewhat uninformed, considering that nowhere, in almost twelve pages of text, does he mention the Japanese governments' attempts to make peace. The use of atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a heinous and unjustified act, and Paul Fussell would do well to learn that.