Analysis Of The Shock Of War By Sean Kennedy

In the second half of the twentieth century, it was understood by the majority of society that civilians physically and psychologically suffered from warfare. In The Shock of War by Sean Kennedy, the author weaves a global perspective of how World War Two entered and affected citizens world-wide. As stated in the novel, “As many as 60 million people died as a result of the Second World War; over half of them were civilians” (Kennedy). China became a breeding group of corruptness that allowed millions of deaths as Japanese soldiers raided homes and killed civilians, illustrating that soldiers were not the sole victims of warfare (Kennedy). Moreover, a woman reported that she delivered her newborn on the side of a country road, illustrating how

In Hiroshima, civilians who were uninvolved in Japan’s imperialist motives were punished for their nationality when they were hit with nuclear bombs that would cease to be forgotten. By reading the testimonies of the survivors of Hiroshima, the startling sights that the Japanese were unable to process illustrate how nuclear warfare permanently harmed civilians. In the Testimony of Yosaku Mikami, the firefighter tells his story of the many who were scorned to death, dying in unimaginable pain due to the United State’s mission to punish the Japanese government for their brutal imperial conquests in the late 1900s. However, hundreds of thousands who were not supportive of such actions died due to the faults of their government, which exhibits the unjustness of warfare to civilians, who decided to be uninvolved yet had their cities torn apart due to other nations’ generalized animosity. The dehumanizing experience of Mikami was shared by hundreds of Japanese civilians, as it was written, “We tried to carry them by their arms and legs and to place them onto the fire

Some of them lost their hair before their death. Yes. There were lots of firemen who died one or one and a half months later (Mikami). Even after the bombing, people lost their lives or lived the rest in trauma, trying to comprehend what they witnessed, thus illustrating the heavy civilian impacts of war. On a separate note, the Khmer Rouge agenda consisted of the destruction of ethnic minorities and Buddhism (Neil). In Killing Fields, there were an estimated two million or more deaths based on their identity, which dehumanized Cambodians who were seen as a nuisance to their nation. Millions of children were left motherless or fatherless solely due to the violent biases of those in power. In a course reading, Sisowath Doung Chanto, one of many who suffered, discusses the brutality of the Khmer Rouge genocide. Sadly, he lost his father to the Khmer Rouge genocide and stated how his father’s punishment was so brutal that the executioner himself could not speak of it without shock (Chanto); he was beaten to the point where he lost consciousness. Again, Chanto’s experience serves as a reminder of how innocent civilians were tormented due to their ethnic identities and they were unable to seek political aid, as it was stated in the lecture that there was no foreign aid