Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors [Paperback]

Japan Broadcasting Corporation (Editor), Soji Matsumoto (Introduction)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Japanese (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 109 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon Books, Inc. (March 12, 1981)
• Language: English, Japanese
• ISBN-10: 0394748239
• ISBN-13: 978-0394748238
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,373,930 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What we really don't understand about nuclear weapons, October 30, 2005

By 

P. Doob - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Unforgettable fire: Pictures drawn by atomic bomb survivors (Hardcover)

Any person who thinks they understand what nuclear weapons do is mistaken. Unless they were targetted by one, as the survivors drawing this remarkable collection of pictures were. The collection began with one person bringing a hand-drawn picture to NHK, Japan's public broadcasting corporation. When the picture was displayed, thousands of survivors committed their memories to paper and sent in their lay art. This book is a distillation of the exhibit that was created. Many of the pictures have text within them explaining the situation. Translations to English are provided. Although the pictures are haunting enough, additional text of the survivor's recollections, in their own words, is included with each frame, putting the situation in context of what was happening when the explosion occured and what happened afterwards. The eloquence of their words is not easy to describe. The position of this book is that the world must know what these weapons--even the tiny ones used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki--do to living things. I found no trace of anger, only genuine concern that the people of the world find out what these weapons do before they find out firsthand.

From my job, I was familiar with the atomic bomb survivor cancer datasets, the calculated radiation doses, the arguments over how much came from neutrons and how much from penetrating radiation, and was familiar with the with-enough-shovels argument for how we could survive a limited nuclear exchange. I read the paperback version in 1977 and was amazed at how little I realy understood about the effects of nuclear weapons. I recently came across the copy, water-damaged from a minor basement flood, and went online to see what I could find. Finding that it was available in hardback was a relief. Please buy this book. Read it a few times. Share it with friends. Donate it to a library. Then buy another. Seriously.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pictures of the apocalypse, January 18, 2001

By 

"berkrod" (Providence, RI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors (Paperback)

I have never, ever encountered a book this powerful. The pictures it contains, though not drawn by artists, capture an immediate reality of what they had seen. In this case what they saw was the explosion and afterefects of an atomic bomb. The pictures that were burned in their memory, after many years were recorded on paper and shared. The images will be hard to forget.