"Hundreds and hundreds of the dead were so badly burned in the terrific heat generated by the bomb that it was not even possible to tell whether they were men or women, old or young"
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Numbers stop being numbers the moment the body becomes unrecognizable. Burchett’s sentence is built to force that switch. The repetition of “hundreds and hundreds” refuses the tidy arithmetic of casualty counts, insisting on scale while admitting that scale itself can’t do the moral work. Then he pivots from quantity to obliteration: “so badly burned” and “terrific heat” are blunt, almost reportorial phrases, but their plainness is the point. He isn’t dressing horror in metaphor; he’s documenting what language struggles to carry.
The most devastating move is the final clause: “not even possible to tell whether they were men or women, old or young.” That list is the inventory of identity, the categories that usually grant empathy and social meaning. Burchett shows those categories erased. Subtext: modern warfare doesn’t merely kill; it levels distinctions, making the very human markers we use to mourn irrelevant. The bomb doesn’t discriminate, and the aftermath prevents even the living from restoring personhood through recognition.
Context matters. Burchett was the first Western journalist to report from Hiroshima in 1945, writing against a flood of official minimization and euphemism. His work quickly became contested terrain in Cold War politics, attacked not only for its conclusions but for what it threatened: the comforting narrative that the new weapon was clean, decisive, and strategically “necessary.” This sentence is an argument disguised as observation. By centering the body, he challenges the abstraction that makes mass death governable on paper.
The most devastating move is the final clause: “not even possible to tell whether they were men or women, old or young.” That list is the inventory of identity, the categories that usually grant empathy and social meaning. Burchett shows those categories erased. Subtext: modern warfare doesn’t merely kill; it levels distinctions, making the very human markers we use to mourn irrelevant. The bomb doesn’t discriminate, and the aftermath prevents even the living from restoring personhood through recognition.
Context matters. Burchett was the first Western journalist to report from Hiroshima in 1945, writing against a flood of official minimization and euphemism. His work quickly became contested terrain in Cold War politics, attacked not only for its conclusions but for what it threatened: the comforting narrative that the new weapon was clean, decisive, and strategically “necessary.” This sentence is an argument disguised as observation. By centering the body, he challenges the abstraction that makes mass death governable on paper.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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