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The Good War is sort of about one guy that is trying to say how the war actually is. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor even though peoples lives were at risk the people that lived they will never be able to get rid of that horrible day. It will stick with them until the day they die especially the children they lost friends and they even lost family.

I read the book "The Good War" by Studs Terkel. He tells the stories of people who lived through World War II and some of who even participated in it. Some of the people he interviewed were just children when the Pearl Harbor Attack happened but they can tell you exactly what they were doing or where they were when it happened. If something like that happened again it would be very hard to forget about it. There are also many different opinions that could be taken on the theme of this book. One is that this book shows that in a time of crisis people of all different kinds come together for the same cause, to serve and protect their country. Another few would be that there should be no war of any kind, no matter what you are fighting for and some of the stories in this book relate to that theme. But what jumped out at me was that no matter what these people went through or who they lost in the process; be it friends, fathers, or brothers they were proud of what they accomplished and were proud to serve their country the way that they did.

One of the stories that made me stop and think that World War II was a serious thing that was changing the youth of that time was from a Marine who fought in the war. He recalls a time when a Japanese fighter had the top of his head blown off. ''He was just sitting upright in front of the machine gun. . . . His eyes were wide open. It had rained all night and the rain had collected inside of his skull. This was just a mild-mannered kid who was now a twentieth century savage.'' This passage stuck out in my mind for one reason. We as Americans can sit and judge and say what we would do about the war or how we would do it but do we really know until we are truly put in that position? I cannot even imagine throwing coral into a dead man's skull and not even be a bit affected by that fact that this man was dead and had been sitting there. This quote kind of shows how people came together. As soon as Pearl Harbor occurred most people of any age or race wanted to "suit up", grab a gun and go defend their country. But this paragraph also shows how war is not taken as seriously as it should be. If we today saw a dead person on the street with eyes wide open and the top of his head blown off, we would scream and run. So in times like these when soldiers are going through this and just normal people are seeing things like this, it is human nature to turn for someone for help and this is what these people did.

The event that sticks out in my mind when people banded together like this in the past few years was September 11, 2001. That is a day that we all will remember. Like the people who lived during Pearl Harbor, if you asked most people today where they were when the planes struck the Twin Towers they will be able to tell you. I know I was in the 4th grade and we had just come back from lunch when our teachers had a "meeting" and then told us what had happened. I also remember that our librarian had a son that worked somewhere near the towers and she had to leave to see if he was OK. Another example of when people came together in time of trouble would be Flight 93. This was the flight that was took over by terrorists on 9/11 and 40 people most of whom didn't know each other came together and took down the plane so that no more innocent people would be killed. 40 people died on that plane when it crashed in Pennsylvania. These people are true heroes because they sacrificed their lives to try to save other people. they banded together in a time of trouble just like in this book.

All in all I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about World War II and the experiences but doesn't want to read a boring book that has just straight facts. This book will help you learn first hand what it was like to live that time and help you learn more what people went through and how they dealt with it.

The Descision to Use Atomic Weaponsfrom

The Descision to Use Atomic Weaponsfrom
A People's War?Howard Zinn
Still, the vast bulk of the American population was mobilized, in the army, and in civilian life, to fight the war, and the atmosphere of war enveloped more and more Americans. Public opinion polls show large majorities of soldiers favoring the draft for the postwar period. Hatred against the enemy, against the Japanese particularly, became widespread. Racism was clearly at work. Time magazine, reporting the battle of Iwo Jima, said: "The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing .. . indicates it." .... The bombing of Japanese cities continued the strategy of saturation bombing to destroy civilian morale; one nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo took 80,000 lives. And then, on August 6, 1945, came the lone American plane in the sky over Hiroshima, dropping the first atomic bomb, leaving perhaps 100,000 Japanese dead, and tens of thousands more slowly dying from radiation poisoning. Twelve U.S. navy fliers in the Hiroshima city jail were killed in the bombing, a fact that the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged, according to historian Martin Sherwin (A World Destroyed). Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with perhaps 50,000 killed. The justification for these atrocities was that this would end the war quickly, making unnecessary an invasion of Japan. Such an invasion would cost a huge number of lives, the government said-a million, according to Secretary of State Byrnes; half a million, Truman claimed was the figure given him by General George Marshall. (When the papers of the Manhattan Project-the project to build the atom bomb- were released years later, they showed that Marshall urged a warning to the Japanese about the bomb, so people could be removed and only military targets hit.) These estimates of invasion losses were not realistic, and seem to have been pulled out of the air to justify bombings which, as their effects became known, horrified more and more people. Japan, by August 1945, was in desperate shape and ready to surrender. New York Times military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, shortly after the war:
The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26. Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war:
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. But could American leaders have known this in August 1945? The answer is, clearly, yes. The Japanese code had been broken, and Japan's messages were being intercepted. It was known the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had begun talking of surrender a year before this, and the Emperor himself had begun to suggest, in June 1945, that alternatives to fighting to the end be considered. On July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired his ambassador in Moscow: "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace.. .." Martin Sherwin, after an exhaustive study of the relevant historical documents, concludes: "Having broken the Japanese code before the war, American Intelligence was able to-and did-relay this message to the President, but it had no effect whatever on efforts to bring the war to a conclusion." If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender- that is, if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place-the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war. Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives? Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it? General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it. Or was it, as British scientist P. M. S. Blackett suggested (Fear, War, and the Bomb), that the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war against Japan? The Russians had secretly agreed (they were officially not at war with Japan) they would come into the war ninety days after the end of the European war. That turned out to be May 8, and so, on August 8, the Russians were due to declare war on Japan, But by then the big bomb had been dropped, and the next day a second one would be dropped on Nagasaki; the Japanese would surrender to the United States, not the Russians, and the United States would be the occupier of postwar Japan. In other words, Blackett says, the dropping of the bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.. .." Blackett is supported by American historian Gar Alperovitz (Atomic Diplomacy), who notes a diary entry for July 28, 1945, by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, describing Secretary of State James F. Byrnes as "most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in." Truman had said, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." It was a preposterous statement. Those 100,000 killed in Hiroshima were almost all civilians. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey said in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population." The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped. Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb? Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment? Martin Shenvin says that among the Nagasaki dead were probably American prisoners of war. He notes a message of July 31 from Headquarters, U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces, Guam, to the War Department:
Reports prisoner of war sources, not verified by photos, give location of Allied prisoner of war camp one mile north of center of city of Nagasaki. Does this influence the choice of this target for initial Centerboard operation? Request immediate reply. The reply: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard remain unchanged." True, the war then ended quickly. Italy had been defeated a year earlier. Germany had recently surrendered, crushed primarily by the armies of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, aided by the Allied armies on the West. Now Japan surrendered.