The Atomic Bomb and Hiroshima mon Amour “You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing.” In Hiroshima mon Amour, mise-en-scene and editing are used in conjunction with inspiration from the French New Wave Movement to express the severity and complexity of the traumas endured following the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. In this trauma narrative, mise-en-scene and disjunctive editing create a unique tone that ultimately represents the crippling struggle between past, present, and future. This “struggle” also allows for an emerging theme between personal and public tragedies, understanding the link between She (Emmanuelle Riva)’s experiences and the bombing in Hiroshima. Involved in two wars during the time of Hiroshima mon Amour’s release in 1959, the ideological stance of France was inevitably centered around war. However, this film presents an alternative ideological viewpoint, focusing on suffering and remembrance rather than the tragedies themselves. This point of view can be traced back to the start of the French New Wave movement where using film to portray thoughts and emotions allowed filmmaker Alan Resnais the opportunity to produce a film with his own strong creative touch. The first scene in this film opens on a dark room inside of which a couple lay naked wrapped in each other’s arms. Light classical music plays in the background, and She tells her story of Hiroshima. He (Eiji Okada) frequently chimes in with his strong, deep voice, telling She that she
The filmmakers’ main ideas are that the government misled and lied to the people of the U.S. so that they would believe that the atomic bomb would have no effect on their health and security, that we should question if the government should have lied to the American people, and to make us question whether or not the citizens of the U.S. would continue to be as naive as the people of the 1950’s.
In the essay “The Scar,” the author Kildare Dobbs reports the parallel stories of Emiko; a young Japanese girl and Captain Robert Lewis; a U.S. army Captain harrowing events of Aug 6/1945 in Hiroshima, a day that forever changed their lives. Emiko, a 15 year old “fragile and vivacious” Japanese girl lived an hour’s train ride away from Hiroshima, in a town called Otake with her parents, her two sisters and brother. At that time, her youngest sister was extremely sick with heart troubles, her 13 year old brother was with the Imperial Army and her father was an antique dealer. Emiko and her 13 year old sister Hideko traveled by train daily to Hiroshima to their women’s college. Captain Robert Lewis was the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, a U.S.
The crises to which this work responds was the total annihilation of Hiroshima and the aftershock experienced by those left
Mr. Tanimoto consciously repeated to himself “‘These are human beings’”(Hersey 1946), as he attempted to save paralyzed, dying men and women, in the book “Hiroshima” by John Hersey. This nonfiction book was published on August 31 1946, a year after the atomic bombing fell on Hiroshima, Japan. This publication was raw, uncensored, and truthful. John Hersey unapologetically revealed the gruesome damages done by the bombing, while also silencing those who believed that the atomic bomb was a justified attack. Hersey’s brilliant journalism and ability to write this story without bias, is why this book was selected. The author did not want those who died to be remembered as casualties, but as mothers, fathers and children. Hersey wrote this book about the the physical, and psychological impact this bomb had on both survivors and victims of the atomic bomb. There were many historical events that contributed to the cause and effect of the atomic attack; historical events such as industrialization, the trench wars, and militarism. This was not just a simple bomb, but a complex attack on humanity.
In Hiroshima, John Hersey focuses on the survivors of the atomic bomb that is dropped on the city of Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Instead of focusing on one individual, Hersey decides to report on six that survive the blast. The survivors came from many different walks of life and were all affected by the coming of the nuclear age. Mrs. Hatsayo Nakamura was a widow raising three young children. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was a young surgeon unhurt during the explosion, leaving him to care for thousands of Hiroshima’s wounded. Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge was a German priest that comforts many of the wounded and dying. Toshiko Sasaki was a young woman working in a factory to make ends meet for her family and her parents. Dr.
Thank God for the Atomic Bomb by Paul Fussel is a provocative essay about the opposing views on the two atomic bombs that America dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan ending World War 2, the most defecating event to happen in history. Over a few million-innocent people died that day, and thousands of the survivors and their offspring have suffered or died since of the result of the chemicals used in the bomb. Fussel was a purple hearted second lieutenant military man frontline in the war. He writes about the difference of opinion of using the atomic bomb from two views: those with firsthand combat with the Japanese and those without firsthand combat experience with the Japanese. Paul Fussel’s essay has the primary aim of persuading the reader that the Atomic bomb was the best choice as a means to end the war and he uses the primary mode of evaluation to persuade. His secondary aim is referential, to inform and explain to those who had no firsthand experience in that war and he uses the secondary mode of description to do this, citing from those against the bomb and those with their hands in the daily blood.
Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge’s journey in the book Hiroshima was extremely exciting and touched me personally. His acts of heroism even in bad conditions and constant xenophobia by the locals show how he was truly selfless. Even though he was brave and a hero his journey did not have that much of an effect on my views on the use of atomic bombs in Japan in World War II.
Before John Hersey’s novel, Hiroshima, Americans viewed Japanese as cruel and heartless people. This warped perspective caused the majority of American citizens to feel complacent about the use of the atomic bomb against civilians. Americans, in many ways, were blinded by their own ignorance to notice the severity of the destruction suffered by not only the city of Hiroshima but, more importantly, the people who lived there. The six testimonies in Hiroshima illustrate the strength and optimistic attitude of the Japanese people. In this essay, I will discuss the feelings towards the ethics surrounding the use of the atomic bomb, next I will look at two testimonies and how their lives
To fully comprehend why and how this cinematic motion took place, it is valuable here to establish the wider social climate of France at the time, and the active forces which heavily shaped New Wave cinema. Between the years of 1945 and 1975, France would undergo “thirty glorious years” of economic growth, urbanization, and a considerable baby boom, all of which came to expand and radically alter the parameters of French culture (Haine 33). Beneath the surface affluence however, France was in a state of deep self-evaluation and consciousness. Following WW11, the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were calamitous airstrikes that left thousands of people perished and with brutal trauma. In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, the government produced mini air strikes to induce terror into the citizen’s mind allowing the government to feed off that terror. Furthermore, the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 1984 have segments of divergence and parallel structures.
“Thank God for the Atom Bomb” is an essay wrote by Paul Fussell in 1981 during the forty-second anniversary of the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The title of the essay is very provocative since a lot of people consider those bombs as inhuman and unethical. However, Fussell, in his essay gives a different point of view. In other words he gives us a point of view of someone who was the in the middle of the combat and even got wounded fighting in France. In the introduction to his essay, Fussell stated that “the importance of experience, in influencing, if not determining one’s views about that use of the atom bomb”.
The book begins by telling us what the six survivors happened to had been doing that fateful morning. Some were working, others cooking. It all feels very human, which shows great contrast between the unhuman weapon of mass destruction they witnessed. One by one, we learn what happened to each of our characters, and how they managed to survive the explosion. For instance, Mr. Tanimoto ran in his garden to hide behind a large rock. Like almost all people in Hiroshima at the time of the bomb, they heard no roar or explosion. They only felt the sudden change in pressure, the heat, and the blinding light coming from the bomb. The force was so immense, Father Kleinsorge, a German Jesuit priest staying in the city on a mission, first thought that an asteroid had struck Hiroshima directly. Immediately after the explosion, wounded began to poor into the hospital that still stood, the red cross hospital in which only six doctors out of
Stanley Kubrick’s sexual parody, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, illustrates an unfathomed nuclear catastrophe. Released in the midst of the Cold War, this 1964 film satirizes the heightened tensions between America and Russia. Many sexual insinuations are implemented to ridicule the serious issue of a global nuclear holocaust, in an effort to countervail the terror that plagued America at that time. Organizing principles, such as Kubrick’s blunt political attitudes about the absurdity of war and the satirical genre, are echoed by the film style of his anti-war black comedy, Dr. Strangelove.
Intense moral justification was needed in order to make the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki however, President Truman was ultimately the man who made the final decision to launch ‘Little Boy’ and destroy Hiroshima, Nagasaki and their civilians, thus forcing an end to the war. Although there were many alternatives presented to President Truman, it is unknown as to whether they would have actually succeeded in ending the war or producing less casualties. Truman made the decision to drop these bombs in the heat of war but his justification of having a military target appeared extremely unrealistic, as both cities were full of innocent civilians. The morality of the bombs have been debated over the years, however the publication of the actual damage to civilian life caused a strong voice opposed to the usage in the 60 years following the action.
As long as there has been war, those involved have managed to get their story out. This can be a method of coping with choices made or a way to deal with atrocities that have been witnessed. It can also be a means of telling the story of war for those that may have a keen interest in it. Regardless of the reason, a few themes have been a reoccurrence throughout. In ‘A Long Way Gone,’ ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ and ‘Novel without a Name,’ three narrators take the readers through their memories of war and destruction ending in survival and revelation. The common revelation of these stories is one of regret. Each of these books begins with the main character as an innocent, patriotic soldier or civilian and ends in either the loss of innocence and regret of choices only to be compensated with as a dire warning to those that may read it. These books are in fact antiwar stories meant not to detest patriotism or pride for one’s country or way of life, but to detest the conditions that lead to one being so simpleminded to kill another for it. The firebombing of Dresden, the mass execution of innocent civilians in Sierra Leone and a generation of people lost to the gruesome and outlandish way of life of communism and Marxism should be enough to convince anyone. These stories serve as another perspective for the not-so-easily convinced.