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Hiroshima

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Hiroshima was published in 1946 - a year after the bomb was dropped - in New Yorker magazine. Uniquely in its history, the magazine devoted its entire issue to Hersey's 30,000 word essay. Only later was it turned into a book; the final chapter on the subsequent lives of the six subjects wasn't written until 1985.

Hersey set out to put a human face on the consquences of the atomic bomb. All earlier news accounts, articles and stories had been focused on the statistics, the science, and the effort that led to the nuclear weapon. Understood in that context, understanding what Hersey was trying to do and say, the book is even more remarkable.

It is not a novel; a novel is a work of fiction. It is an essay, a work of reportage. This story is true. The book is all the more remarkable because Hersey was born and raised in China, the son of missionaries, and had no reason to be sympathetic to or about the Japanese. A war correspondent for Time, he earned a commendation from the U.S. Army at Guadacanal. He cannot fairly be accused of anything but supreme objectivity. By telling the true stories of six survivors in an absolutely straightforward way, without judging the decision to use the bomb, he put an intensely human face on the consequences.

He was criticized at the time and is criticized today for taking the events that day out of context. The bomb is supposed to have saved a million American casualties (a highly suspect figure today). It was supposed to have shortened the war by a year or more. Those critics are themselves missing the true context. At the time, the historical events leading to Truman's decision were well known (although recast in February 1947 by Stinson). Hersey's goal was to make the story real in a new way. Those facts are well and good, Hersey is saying, but there were bad consequences as well. In the process, he created a remarkable book.

I was glad to see New York University recently named Hersey's Hiroshima as the best single work of reporting in the 20th century. As events unfold in the escalating nuclear arms race on the Indian subcontinent, everyone needs to understand the human consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. By helping keep Hersey's work before us, perhaps we can avoid another Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

When the atomic bomb dropped at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was a thriving city of two hundred forty-five thousand people. By 8:20, one hundred thousand of those people were dead. Combining the broad perspective of the absolute devastation of the city with the tiniest details of six individual lives, John Hersey provides a powerful closeup of a few survivors of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, giving the carnage a human perspective.

Focusing on Mr. Tanimoto, a Methodist pastor; Mrs. Nakamura, the widow of a tailor, and her three children; Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a physician in a private clinic; Fr. Wilhelm Kleinsorge, S. J, a priest in a Catholic mission; Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young surgeon at the Red Cross Hospital; and Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in a tin works, as they survive the initial attack, the author follows their daily movements, their subsequent illnesses, their fears, and the eventual outcomes of their lives. The victims become human, and their concerns become universal, as Hersey shows them digging themselves out and helping their neighbors, filled with an "elated community spirit" in the days and weeks after the bombing.

Details of the fires following the bombing, the unexpected radiation sickness, the mysteries surrounding the kind of bomb this was (some Japanese believed that the allies had sprinkled powdered magnesium over the city and then ignited it), the devastating rains that followed, and the monumental scale of the damage are presented in straightforward, factual style, the horrors of the reality so overwhelming that Hersey had no need to try to control his narrative by selecting details or ordering them for effect.

Published in the New Yorker in August, 1946, this anniversary remembrance had immediate and dramatic repercussions, perhaps because the focus on "ordinary" Japanese citizens, much like the Americans who read the article, as opposed to "the enemy," resonated with his readers. Thousands listened to four days of its reading on ABC radio, and many others bought the New Yorker to read his account. By raising also the question of the ethics of dropping such a bomb (which some of the Japanese agree was acceptable as a normal part of the war), he also forces his readers to consider the long-term implications of atomic warfare. Dramatic, powerful, and very personal, this account of six lives, changed forever, is a monument to the human spirit in the face of incredible adversity. n Mary Whipple

On August 6th, 1945, a bomb with the explosive force of 12,500 tons of dynamite was shot into the heart of the Japanese metropolis of Hiroshima. Not only did the initial blast virtually topple the city, maiming and killing tens of thousands, but the radiation unleashed by the atomic bomb inflicted countless more with radiation poisoning that caused chronic sickness and even more gruesome deaths. Less than a year after the attack, journalist, John Hersey, interviewed six survivors for a special edition of the New Yorker. The issue sparked a sensation, selling out within hours and gathering extensive acclaim from Hersey's peers. The article was sent to members of the Book-of-the-Month club as a selection and was read aloud on special radio broadcasts all across the world.

Reading the paperback edition of Mr. Hersey's extensive article, I had little difficulty seeing why it gathered such acclaim. He does not just take readers to the scene of the bombing; he takes them behind the eyes of those affected. Mr. Hersey temporarily disregarded the sociopolitical and moral debate concerning the atomic attack and told a straightforward, compelling and vivid story of human beings coming face to face with mammoth, almost surreal, tragedy. This new addition, featuring an additional chapter that reveals the fates of the six survivors forty years later and describes the social stigma, medical difficulties and psychological and philosophical adjustments involved in being a "hibakusha" or "explosion-effected person" only makes this journalistic triumph even better. I highly recommend Hiroshima to anyone interested in atomic warfare, World War II, Japanese culture or those who simply wish to read about the human experience at its most grave and epic.

Hiroshima isn't meant to be great entertainment. The point of journalist John Hersey's account of six survivors of the Hiroshima bombing (Miss Sasaki, Rev. Tanimoto, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki, Dr. Fuji, and Mrs. Nakamura) is meant to be an unbiased view of the actual horrors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima that killed over 100,000 residents of that city.

John Hersey carries the book right along, never holding up for a minute. All the details of the accounts of the six survivors are written in great deal, and create a series of emotions unsurpassed by many works of both fiction and non-fiction on the subject.

For all of you readers who found it boring, I guess you didn't understand what you were getting into. This book must be read with the knowledge that it is a journalist's account of the bombing of Hiroshima, not a straight-forward work of non-fiction.

P.S. In all the new publications of the book, a detailed account of the lives of the six survivors the years following the Hiroshima bombing is included as a kind of epilogue written still by John Hersey.

John Hersey has written a powerful novel of the Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath. To show the horror of nuclear holocaust through the eyes of the survivors is the best way to convey it. The 6 survivors documented in this book where extraordinary people who went on to do something with their lives instead of being bitter. The story that was the most inspiring was Dr.Fujii and how he helped others. Then after the war, he enjoyed life to the fullest and helped many foreigners as well. The sad thing was that even though they had nothing to do with what happened to them , the survivors were shunned even by their own people for being "hibakusha". To know what that is, you have to read the book. So I encourage whoever sees this review to read the book.

As it stands today, John Hersey's "Hiroshima" is a two-layered book. Written in 1946, the first four chapters, comprising 90 pages, describe the experiences of six inhabitants of Hiroshima, from the morning of August 6, 1945 when the bomb was dropped, through the following year. Added in 1985, chapter 5 adds a further 60 pages that enable the reader to trace the long-term consequences of the bomb on the lives of these six people, as well as Japan and the world in general.

The witnesses chosen by Hersey, "who were among the luckiest in Hiroshima" (p87), insofar as they were not instantly vaporized, burned to a cinder or flayed alive, are wonderfully diverse. Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto was a Methodist minister; Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a war widow and mother of three; Miss Toshiko Sazaki, a clerk about 20 years old; and Fr. Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a 38-year-old German Jesuit.

The last two, Mazakazu Fujii and Terufumi Sasaki, were both doctors, a profession much in demand in the aftermath of the bombing, as only 65 of the 150 doctors in the city had survived, and most of them were so severely wounded that they could not be of any assistance to anyone. As for the 1,780 nurses, 1,654 were either dead or incapacitated, resulting in massive overwork for the small and virtually helpless remaining staff.

"Hiroshima" is of value mostly as a testimony, adding six more life stories to the existing literature, and enabling the reader to form a more complete picture of the aftereffects of the blast. Unlike "Children of the A-Bomb" though, a volume which I recently reviewed, it gains strength from its interweaving of the individual stories, as people meet and lose sight of each other, giving the book a unity and a dramatic construction that is reminiscent of the familiar disaster-movie pattern.

Quite unobtrusively, the author also manages to give us the big picture, through the sparse, judicious use of statistics and other general information. The book thus answered some of the questions I had left after my previous readings on the subject, such as the role of charitable institutions after the bombing, Dr. Sasaki illustrating the work of the Red Cross for instance.

I also wondered whether the Japanese had suffered the same fate as some German civilians in the firestorms of WWII (as described by Jorg Friedrich in "The Fire : The Bombing of Germany 1940-1945"): getting stuck and burned alive in boiling asphalt. Hersey partially answered this question by mentioning that in the afternoon of August 6, "the asphalt of the streets was still so soft and hot from the fires that walking was uncomfortable." So some of the horrors endured by the Germans must have been repeated there too.

This book may well be the best introduction on the market to Hiroshima as seen by the victims. It can be helpfully complemented by the aforementioned "Children of the A-Bomb: Testament of the Boys and Girls of Hiroshima" edited by Dr. Arata Osada; Keiji Nakazawa's 10-volume manga "Barefoot Gen" (a rather ugly but powerful series, which is much superior to the two movie adaptations); Paul Wilmshurst's 2005 BBC documentary on the subject; and Koreyoshi Kurahara and Roger Spottiswoode's brilliant "Hiroshima" (1995), which seamlessly blends stock films and reconstructions in a dispassionate narrative of the events leading up to the dropping of the bomb.

The Saturday Review of Books claimed that anyone who is able to read should read this book. I wholeheartedly agree. The city of Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb on April 6, 1945. This book begins on that day, detailing the terrible destruction and the hardships that fell on the citizens of the city.

The book follows the lives of several survivors-a doctor, a housewife, and a German priest among others-as they struggle through the ruins of their homes and the lingering effects the radiation had on their lives for decades afterwards.

Hiroshima is a testament to humanity and its will to survive, to move on, and try desperately to not repeat the tragedies of the past. Appropriately, Hiroshima points no fingers of blame, but instead shows the best humanity has to offer in the face of unspeakable horror.

The book Hiroshima, by John Hersey, follows the lives of six survivors of the Atomic Bomb, dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 AM. The book chronicles the lives of these six survivors up to forty years after the dropping of the bomb. On that day, more then 100,000 Japanese were killed, and these six were fortunate to live through it. The survivors had to continue their lives through their will to survive, overcoming all obstacles such as pain, poverty, disease, famine, and lack of humanity. The survivors of the bomb had to live the rest of their lives suffering with more then just their physical pain, but also with their social non-acceptance. People would not hire A-bomb victims, or Hibakusha (literally- explosion affected people) because Non-Hibakusha employers developed a prejudice against survivors, and their descendents. The employers were scared that victims would come down with a disease making them unreliable workers. This was the case for survivor Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura. Mrs. Nakamura, weak and poor, began a courageous struggle, which would last for many years, to keep herself and her children alive. She was forced to work many laborious jobs, such as delivering loaves of bread, selling fish, and cleaning houses for her neighbors, and still earned barely enough money to put food on the table. Because of her weakened condition due to radiation exposure, Mrs. Nakamura had to rest for two of three days for every week she worked. Help to her did not come until 1957, thirteen years after the bombing, when the Diet, the congress of Japan, passed the A-bomb Victims Medical Care law, which gave free medical care to survivors. Other survivors of the Atomic Bomb went through pain, both physically and socially, as a direct result of the explosion. Miss Toshinki Sasaki, at the time of the explosion, was at work talking to a co-worker. The force of the bomb knocked down bookcases, which landed on Miss Sasaki's left leg, crushing it instantly. When rescuers found her, they carried her into a field, under a tin roof, next to two dying people, whose skin was peeling off. Here she sat for two days without any food or water, with terrible pain. Three years before the explosion, Miss Sasaki was engaged to be married, by arrangements through her parents. The couple liked each other, and accepted the arrangements. The two started a life together, but her fiancé was drafted into the war. Upon his return, after the bombing, he did not come back to her. His family had had second thoughts on allowing their son to marry a Hibakusha and a cripple. Miss Sasaki eventually gave up hope on finding a husband, and decided to become a nun. Besides continuing difficulties with her leg, she endured liver dysfunction, night sweats and morning fevers, borderline angina, and blood spots. At a banquet celebrating her twenty-fifth anniversary of becoming a nun, Miss Sasaki made a speech. "...It is as if I had been given a spare life when I survived the A-bomb. But I prefer not to look back. I shall keep moving forward." Miss Sasaki had a forgiving heart and decided to keep moving foreword with her life. She was going to have the bomb affect her life in the smallest way possible. The survivors in this novel are great examples on how life goes on, even after the human spirit has endured all types of hardships. Miss Toshinki Sasaki and Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura continued living their lives, making it as best as possible. They overcame pain, poverty, disease and famine also getting through a time of discrimination. This book is definitely worth reading because it shows the human beings willingness to live, even after experiencing ones worst time in life.

Hiroshima was John Hersey's brain child about his feelings on World War 2. Even though this book is not the best source if you are interested in statistics and the United State's side of the story about the Atomic Bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, instead Hersey turns the tables and shows how the Japanese dealt with the disaster they were tossed. Hersey investigated and interviewed six people who lived through the bomb and retells there survival tales. Just like in many of his other books Hersey is able to show the problems he finds in the world, and lets people know about these problems through his work. His ability to turn around and show a situation from another point of view is the reason that Hiroshima is such a great work.

This book was very well written, it contains bits and pieces of journalistic facts while using the lives of ordinary people to show the impact of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in a compassionate and perceptive voice. John Hersey uses facts and the recollections of those who survived to weave a truely remarkable tale of what happens when one decision changes the lives of many. This novel contains bits and pieces of people's lives before and after the atomic bomb had been dropped. Although the book may seem short, the time that you spend thinking about the book is actually quite long. This book is not a light and happy read, it is not some classic that becomes cliqued and quoted all too many times, but what it is is an admirable tale spun not by the author himself, but by the lives of those who managed to do the near impossible. This novel tells the story of those who managed to live.