Hiroshima
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author John Hersey's seminal work of narrative nonfiction which has defined the way we think about nuclear warfare. “One of the great classics of the war" (The New Republic) that tells what happened in Hiroshima during World War II through the memories of the survivors of the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city.
"The perspective [Hiroshima] offers from the bomb’s actual victims is the mandatory counterpart to any Oppenheimer viewing." —GQ Magazine
“Nothing can be said about this book that can equal what the book has to say. It speaks for itself, and in an unforgettable way, for humanity.” —The New York Times
Hiroshima is the story of six human beings who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. John Hersey tells what these six -- a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest -- were doing at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city. Then he follows the course of their lives hour by hour, day by day.
The New Yorker of August 31, 1946, devoted all its space to this story. The immediate repercussions were vast: newspapers here and abroad reprinted it; during evening half-hours it was read over the network of the American Broadcasting Company; leading editorials were devoted to it in uncounted newspapers.
Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book John Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told. His account of what he discovered about them -- the variety of ways in which they responded to the past and went on with their lives -- is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.
"The perspective [Hiroshima] offers from the bomb’s actual victims is the mandatory counterpart to any Oppenheimer viewing." —GQ Magazine
“Nothing can be said about this book that can equal what the book has to say. It speaks for itself, and in an unforgettable way, for humanity.” —The New York Times
Hiroshima is the story of six human beings who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. John Hersey tells what these six -- a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest -- were doing at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city. Then he follows the course of their lives hour by hour, day by day.
The New Yorker of August 31, 1946, devoted all its space to this story. The immediate repercussions were vast: newspapers here and abroad reprinted it; during evening half-hours it was read over the network of the American Broadcasting Company; leading editorials were devoted to it in uncounted newspapers.
Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book John Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told. His account of what he discovered about them -- the variety of ways in which they responded to the past and went on with their lives -- is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.
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Community Reviews
This book was a bit too detached for me, so it didn't have much of an emotional impact. At the same time, its scope is narrow so its purpose is not informative either. Still an enjoyable read.
Short, straight-forward, and yet horribly upsetting. I almost cried several times in the whole forty pages of this book. Something like this, short yet profound, should be required reading for anyone who wants to wield a weapon.
Laborious to read of the process of rebuilding, only because it makes me think of the phrase "It is what it is.". I want to slap someone that says that. It's what we all must do to survive disaster. Somehow, we do, and carry on. That describes to me the human. If you want to survive, you move forward. The mechanics of war and politics is astounding to me and is apparently necessary to keep all parties at stalemate. The book is important for those that have no awareness of this period in history. Historically important. Humanly, I can't bear to read much more.
It is my belief that every American should, at some point in their life, read this book. A harrowing account of the atrocities of nuclear fallout, and what it takes from us as a society.
“He will die - the bomb people, they all die.”
- Tokyo doctor leaving the room of an atomic bomb victim suffering mysterious symptoms about two weeks after the attack on Hiroshima
Before reading this book, I thought relatively little about what was under the mushroom cloud. Hershey tells the story of those people and then follows the personal and social consequence for some of the survivors or “bomb affected people” as they were known in Japan. In one of the book's only entertaining anecdotes, the Japanese apparently decided it would be rude to the dead to refer to some as 'survivors' and so instead invented the term "bomb affected people."
In these stories Hershey locates human virtues of sacrifice and kindness under extreme conditions. But the overarching drumbeat is one of unimaginable suffering caused by man through technology primarily to civilians. Hershey traces the suffering on that day and through the subsequent half century for those fortunate enough to survive.
The story is detailed, unflinching, and traumatizing to read. The book ends by reminding the reader that the large countries of the world spent much of the 20th century proliferating the devices we have just finished reading about. It ends with a statistic, that a majority of those people affected by nuclear weapons assume they will be used again - a higher proportion than those unaffected by nuclear weapons. They have felt the realities of human ambition and it destroyed not just their bodies, but also their illusions.
- Tokyo doctor leaving the room of an atomic bomb victim suffering mysterious symptoms about two weeks after the attack on Hiroshima
Before reading this book, I thought relatively little about what was under the mushroom cloud. Hershey tells the story of those people and then follows the personal and social consequence for some of the survivors or “bomb affected people” as they were known in Japan. In one of the book's only entertaining anecdotes, the Japanese apparently decided it would be rude to the dead to refer to some as 'survivors' and so instead invented the term "bomb affected people."
In these stories Hershey locates human virtues of sacrifice and kindness under extreme conditions. But the overarching drumbeat is one of unimaginable suffering caused by man through technology primarily to civilians. Hershey traces the suffering on that day and through the subsequent half century for those fortunate enough to survive.
The story is detailed, unflinching, and traumatizing to read. The book ends by reminding the reader that the large countries of the world spent much of the 20th century proliferating the devices we have just finished reading about. It ends with a statistic, that a majority of those people affected by nuclear weapons assume they will be used again - a higher proportion than those unaffected by nuclear weapons. They have felt the realities of human ambition and it destroyed not just their bodies, but also their illusions.
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