Citation

Dobos N. Monash Bioeth. Rev. 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Centre for Human Bioethics, Monash University)

DOI

10.1007/s40592-022-00167-3

PMID

36630050

Abstract

Colonel Paul Tibbitts, the American pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, was by most accounts untroubled by what he had done. In the years that followed he even participated in re-enactments of the bombing in front of audiences at model aircraft shows. By contrast the man who flew the reconnaissance plane over Hiroshima immediately before the bombing--Major Claude Eatherly--could hardly live with himself afterwards. He became an outspoken pacifist, donated a portion of his salary to a fund for children in Hiroshima, and would send letters of apology to the victims and their families. He was haunted by nightmares, attempted suicide, and underwent extensive psychiatric treatment (Glover 2012: 100-101). He even committed petty, senseless crimes for no gain, apparently in "a desperate attempt to prove his guilt to himself and to his fellow men, who too easily had classified him as a guiltless, even gilded hero" (Anders and Eatherly 1962, 52).

Although it was not recognised as such during his lifetime, in today's parlance Eatherly's condition would be labelled a "moral injury". This term is now being used to describe the aggravation of the moral emotions--guilt, remorse, shame--to the point of personal dysfunction. The morally injured feel so bad about what they have done, or failed to do, that they struggle to live a minimally decent life. Dawn Weaver, a psychiatric nurse for the US military, described the experience of some veterans thus: "when they come home, they are so horrified by what their primal brain had them do […] that they find themselves absolutely reviled, repugnant. They can't tolerate themselves" (Hautzinger and Scandlyn 2016: 66 − 7). These are the hallmarks of moral injury.

The causes of this condition are varied. A soldier might become morally injured by acts of violence that he perpetrated, or was complicit in. Eatherly falls into this category, as presumably do the veterans mentioned by Weaver, ridden with guilt because of what their "primal brains" had them do. But this is just the tip of the iceberg...

Language: en