2)  Fussell:  "The past, which as always did not know the future, acted in ways that ask to be imagined before they are condemned.  Or simplified."  Comment.  What does this quotation have to do with his argument?  What does Fussell mean when he describes the bombing of Hiroshima as a tragedy rather than as a disaster?

3)  What are we to say about his emphasis upon the ground-level view of the veterans and their experience of the war?  Should we give this perspective primacy?  Why or why not?  "It would be stupid," Fussell writes, "to expect soldiers to be very sensitive humanitarians."  What, then, can we learn by paying attention to their point of view?

4)  Do you agree with Fussell's contention that the memory of World War II has been shaped most profoundly by those who did not fight it?  Is not his scorn for non-combatants but the typical prejudice of the combat soldier?

5)  What is Michael Walzer's response to Fussell?  Why does he refer to Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "terrorism?"  Is this appropriate?  Is Walzer's attempt to maintain a fundamental distinction between the soldier and the civilian an important one?

6)  Should we distinguish between the suffering of the victims of Hiroshima and of "conventional" war?

7)  Should Hiroshima itself be remembered with concepts qualitatively differently from those we associate with "conventional" war?