, and the melodramatic accounts are indelibly imprinted within the memories of anyone who has either been there, lived during that time, or read accounts of the episode. Clearly the author leans toward the belief that the dropping of the bomb at Hiroshima was justified and useful, albeit, tragic, and with the passing of every year, the implications are magnified. He further speculates upon what would have been if the bomb had been dropped sooner. Graphic and vivid images are called into account as the author underscores the moral vagaries which pervade this story, and the soldier's view is spotlighted when, "With the eyes coming at you firing, do you shoot him in the foot, hoping he'll be hurt badly enough to drop or mis-aim the gun with which he's going to kill you, or do you shoot him in the chest and make certain he stops being your mortal enemy?" It would be stupid to expect soldiers to be very sensitive humanitarians (Paul Fussell). The author regards Harry Truman as a democrat (not a Fascist) and had the experience of commanding a small unit of ground troops in the war. But is his argument short-sighted? Certainly, Michael Walzer indicates that it is in his essay on Hiroshima: An Act of Terrorism, who characterizes Hiroshima as exactly that (an act of terrorism) and nothing more. To a large extent, Walzer's essay on Hiroshima is a reaction to Paul Fussell, who himself engaged in combat in the Pacific in 1945. Walzer writes of a "code" which military men live by as do honorable men, and in the case of Hiroshima, this code was broken and violated. Walzer says that Truman's first responsibility was to American soldiers, but he himself was not without responsibility, and given the state of our political and moral order, with which Hiroshima probably has something to do, aren't we all more likely to be the victims than the beneficiaries of terrorist attacks? (Michael Walzer) Clearly, we are witnessing two diametrically opposed position...
