Product Description

When the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, killing 100,000 men, women and children, a new era in human history opened. Written only a year after the disaster, John Hersey brought the event vividly alive with this heartrending account of six men and women who survived despite all the odds. A further chapter was added when, forty years later, he returned to Hiroshima to discover how the same six people had struggled to cope with catastrophe and with often crippling disease. The result is a devastating picture of the long-term effects of one bomb.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14945 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

A remarkable & very human view of a horrific event
I came across this book via the recommendation system after buying several books by Japanese authors and thought it would be worth finding out about what happened to the people involved. Everyone knows (or should!!) what happened but when the personal tales are painted in such a clear manner it is utterly absorbing.
In summary it is a collection of amazing personal stories written in a fantastically vivid and clear journalistic fashion; a book everyone should read.

"The hurt ones were quiet; no one wept, much less screamed in pain..."
When the atomic bomb fell 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 that was dropped (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 broaching the question of the ethics of dropping such a bomb (which, ironically, 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. Mary Whipple

Not only essential, but obligatory
I spent two days in Hiroshima in the spring of 1998. I hadn't read Hersey's book then - I hadn't really read anything specific about it, just had the same general knowledge as everyone else - and so I had no anchor, no coherent viewpoint to cling to, and I was overwhelmed. At one point, standing in the shadow of the A-Bomb Dome (the ruined skeleton of the former Hiroshima Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall and the only original pre-bomb structure still standing), watching a group of 6 year old Japanese children walking away along the riverbank after their teacher had recruited me into an impromptu English lesson, I found that my face was wet in the bright sunshine. Spontaneous public crying is not something I do a lot - never before, in fact, and never since. I defy any Westerner with a conscience to visit that city, to stand in that shadow, and not be physically crushed by rage and guilt and awe.

Five years on, reading Hersey's lucid, simple, humane, and terrifyingly human account of 6th August 1945 and its various aftermaths, those physical and emotional sensations resurfaced (and I nearly cried when I finished it, in the public foyer of my place of work). I abhor the idea of prescribed reading matter, but truly, everyone should read this (and Ibuse's 'Black Rain' as well, an intelligent if inevitable Perfect Partnering by Amazon). The world has not changed. Maybe it never will. But if you don't read 'Hiroshima' - even better, go there - then you're a fool for the future.