Customer Reviews

Hiroshima

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This book is an excellent overview of a handful of people who experienced the atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima, Japan and the rescue efforts by some courages individuals immediately afterwards.

Given the recent concerns of the U.S. and many nations with Iran potentially becoming able to produce a nuclear weapon and the continued issues with North Korea's program, and the overarching concerns related to the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology, this book shows the real horrors of what an atomic explosion causes, both immediately - death and destruction - as well in the immediate and mediate aftermath - the terrible suffering of the survivors(including, severe burns, radiation poisoning, cancer and particularly leukemia, etc.). Particularly compelling was the story of how most of the population that survived the immediate blast effects, desperately sought out water, and how some priests stationed there from the west tried to help survivors.

This is an excellent, well-researched, and brief overview of the effects of an atomic bomb explosion on a city.

Although it's been a couple of years since I read it, Hiroshima is still ingrained in my memory. Hersey introduces a situation of which most people are aware. You are thrust into the lives of a handful of individuals before, during, and after the catastrophic events that marked at that time the pinnacle of human ingenuity and human horror. Like Joseph Conrad in his masterpiece Heart of Darkness, Hersey paints a beautiful yet terrifying picture, sparing no detail. By the end of all the descriptions of death and decay, you feel you have also experienced it, because no matter how many statistics are taught in the classroom or how many pictures you're shown, without that human connection, the dead are just nameless bodies. This is why Hiroshima is as important as it is informational. Hersey connects you with survivors, and tells their remarkable stories to a world that needed to hear them and in reality still needs to hear them.

A reportage tracking and tracing the lives and experiences of six survivors of the Hiroshima atom bomb attack of 1945.

From the first mysterious white flash,Hersey tells-in a detached style that make the horrors more personal and real to the reader-the bemusement of what had caused the cataclysmic destruction (a cluster bomb? Magnesium being showered down and igniting when in contact with electricity? Petrol sprayed and ignited?)the burns and wounds-Tanimoto pulling a burned woman from the river and her skin comes from her arms like gloves from a hand;not easy to forget-the strange illnesses and-finally-the rebuilding, as life goes on.

In addition, Hersey visits Hiroshima 40 years on and looks at the lives his subjects led after the bomb;a struggle for understanding from a nation that regarded survivors as freaks;to try and put the whole thing into some context;to forget or-as with Kiyoshi Tanimoto-to use the horror as a warning to the world and as a focal point for peace.Tanimoto's story is perhaps the most revealing.He was-to a great extent, weather intended or not-very much exploited by the American media who took over his good idea;cynics would say certain individuals were using the moral question of the A bomb and Tanimoto's campaign for self agrandisement,and I'm one! There's also the painfully crass 'This is Your Life' appearance by Tanimoto.You wonder at the insensitivity of 'welcoming' an unsuspecting guest of such a horror with a 'countdown' to when the bomb hit Hiroshima as an introduction to the audience as to who the subject was, closely followed by, "And now a word from our sponsors" and a demo of how fantastic the sponsor's nail varnish is!This is perhaps a greater indignity to Tanimoto than the bomb itself.

This is a vital piece of history, magnificently recorded.(Did Capote use this as a template for his equally brilliant 'In Cold Blood'?)I started reading this late in the evening and found myself reading late into the night to finish it-it is that good and 'unputdownable'.It is not a book you can lay to one side after a few pages and come back to-as I foolishly thought-so make a space in your day to read this entire.It will be a time you will never forget,and neither should the world.

This book exposes the horrors of a nuclear weapon in a way that cannot help but move you. Hersey interviewed survivors of the American nuclear attack against Hiroshima, Japan shortly after the end of the Second World War. The interviews took place literally before the ashes were cool. Their story is one of tremendous suffering; the power of the weapon is amazing. Stories of people immediately vaporized, leaving behind only a shadow on a wall, eyeballs melted out of their sockets, flesh turned to liquid and people dying painful deaths days after the explosion.

There are some that think a nuclear war is survivable, if that is your opinion, you should read this book. It is the most moving and disturbing description of what a nuclear war would really be like. Furthermore, it must be understood that the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima was a mere firecracker compared to the power of a hydrogen bomb.

Thought-provoking quick read. Gives you the details of a disaster you can't even imagine. Would love an even more updated ending, I am now curious as to the fates of children born of the survivors.

In 1946, barely a year after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 & 9, 1945, John Hersey wrote an important little booklet about the effects of the bomb upon the lives of six Hiroshima residents who survived the blast. Updated several times over the next 40 years, Hersey follows the lives of these six. "Hiroshima" is at once a story of the moments just before and just after the tragic event, the effect of the blast upon the city and its residents, the courage, heroism and sacrifices of the survivors as they struggled to understand what had happened and their heroic rescue of other survivors. In this Hersey succeeds admirably. In the process, "Hiroshima" provides a snapshot of Japanese lifestyle and manners. Much of it written in the phraseology of the Japanese themselves, Hersey describes a lifetime of recurring medical and psychological problems. Played against the backdrop of initial resentment of Americans for dropping the bomb, Hersey also describes how the Japanese themselves came to understand the responsibility of their own military leaders in starting the war that resulted in the destruction of their city, as well as the role of religion, Japanese as well as Christianity in dealing with the humanitarian issues. "Hiroshima" is a cautionary tale of war and of man's inhumanity to man, without attempting to overly blame any single individual or group. Short, to the point, interesting, not easy to read (due to its subject), and not easy to dismiss, this small volume should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding the impact our decisions make on others, and how it effects them for the remainder of their lives. For a specifically detailed and more thorough study of the effects of the atom bomb itself, one would need to find a longer and more modern book. This books value is in its humanity, which is, after all, what the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki teach us. Highly recommended. (Note: This reviewer read the 1989 Vintage Press version. Other reviews are also found under other printings.)

This strikes me as a strange little book and I have to admit I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. It has the feeling of a palimpsest - and, indeed, at the core is the 1946 article Hersey wrote for the New Yorker - that lost its justification in the process of being added to and updated. The last third of the book degenerates into a sort of "where are they now" that continues to follow (into the 1970s) the lives of the handful of A-bomb survivors upon whom Hersey originally focused. But the fact of the matter is that all of them went on to lead substantially normal (and not especially remarkable) lives and that none of them has anything very insightful to say about their experiences (which is only what one might naturally expect, though it does lead to curiosity about why Hersey chose to write about them). Once Hersey has described the bomb's immediate effects and the days just afterward, the drama of the book is essentially used up. The bits of political history that he includes (either before or after the bombing) are decidedly sketchy, and Hersey's social analysis of the position of the "explosion-affected persons" in Japan isn't particularly deep. Interesting considering the historical context of the original article that led to the expanded book, but it's a slight effort nonetheless. More than that, it has that unmistakable air of an "assigned book" for high-school or J-high summer reading lists--one that's supposed to carry an important lesson or moral but which is, at base, dull enough to neither offend anyone nor inspire much interest. It's a "read this, it will educate you" book that embodies all the attendant problems of the genre and has a fair amount of difficulty standing the test of time.