6 7 Contextualization/Historical Situation Directions: Using the excerpted portion, explain the historical situation; in other words, what is happening at this time that has influenced, or led to, this source feeling the way they did? My division, like most of the ones transferred from Europe, was going to take part in the invasion at Honshu (island of Japan). The people who preferred invasion to A-bombing seemed to have no intention of proceeding to the Japanese front themselves. I have already noted what a few more days would mean to the luckless troops and sailors on the spot.... On Okinawa, only a few weeks before Hiroshima, 123,000 Japanese and Americans killed each other. War is immoral. War is cruel. ~Paul Fussel, an American World War II soldier, Thank God for the Atom Bomb, 1990