Hiroshima

“Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky Mr. Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it travelled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed a sheet of sun. Both he and Mr. Matsuo reacted in terror—and both had time to react (for they were 3,500 yards, or two miles, from the center of the explosion). Mr. Matsuo dashed up the front steps into the house and dived among the bedrolls and buried himself there. Mr. Tanimoto took four or five steps and threw himself between two big rocks in the garden. He bellied up very hard against one of them. As his face was against the stone, he did not see what happened. He felt a sudden pressure, and then splinters and pieces of board and fragments of tile fell on him. He heard no roar.”

This exemplifies how Hersey reported just what one of the characters saw, heard, and experienced. The above is a straightforward description of what Rev. Tanimoto did as the bomb hit. Hersey presents the information neutrally and objectively, except for the description of the flash as “a sheet of sun.” This tremendous light is present in each character’s story, uniting them.

“Under what seemed to be a local dust cloud, the day grew darker and darker.”

This is an example of both Hersey’s factual, straightforward reporting and his use of literary techniques—in this case, foreshadowing. The force of the explosion caused all manner of particles and dust to rise into the sky, obliterating the sun’s light. The result was darkness that settled over the city. Hersey’s description of the day growing “darker and darker” hints that worse trouble is to come.

“She rose up and freed herself. She heard a child cry, ‘Mother, help me!,’ and saw her youngest—Myeko, the five-year-old—buried up to her breast and unable to move. As Mrs. Nakamura started frantically to claw her way toward the baby, she could see or hear nothing of her other children.”

This passage describes Mrs. Nakamura’s experience when the bomb hit. It’s cinematic in the sense that it describes the action as it unfolded. Hersey puts the reader in the shoes of a parent facing the potential harm of her defenseless children. Hersey’s own interpretation of events may lay in the adverb “frantically.” Otherwise, nouns and verbs (like “to claw”) do the most work in Hersey’s writing.

“Mrs. Nakamura took the children out into the street. They had nothing on but underpants, and although the day was very hot, she worried rather confusedly about their being cold, so she went back into the wreckage and burrowed underneath and found a bundle of clothes she had packed for an emergency, and she dressed them in pants, blouses, shoes, padded-cotton air-raid helmets called bokuzuki, and even, irrationally, overcoats. The children were silent, except for the five-year-old, Myeko, who kept asking questions: ‘Why is it night already? Why did our house fall down? What happened?’”

Hersey conveys Mrs. Nakamura’s confusion and the perspective of a young child. The adult doesn’t think rationally in the face of great destruction, dressing her children in heavy clothes despite the August heat, and the child doesn’t understand the enormity of the situation, only noticing differences and inquiring about them. Hersey never uses a word like “chaos,” preferring to show it in the details.

“At first, Dr. Fujii could see only two fires, one across the river from his hospital site and one quite far to the south. But at the same time, he and his friend observed something that puzzled them, and which, as doctors, they discussed: although there were as yet very few fires, wounded people were hurrying across the bridge in an endless parade of misery, and many of them exhibited terrible burns on their faces and arms. ‘Why do you suppose it is?’ Dr. Fujii asked. Even a theory was comforting that day, and Dr. Machii stuck to his. ‘Perhaps because it was a Molotov flower basket,’ he said.”

This passage illustrates Hersey’s narrative approach. He tells the story just as it unfolded the day of the bombing. Here he uses Dr. Fujii’s point of view, presenting his thought process about what had caused the widespread destruction and casualties. Dr. Fujii’s discussion with a friend evokes the possibility of cluster bombs based on the limited information they had at the time. Both doctors were confused at the number of burn victims in contrast to the few fires. This limited perspective puts readers in the moment with the characters, heightening the drama.

“Of a hundred and fifty doctors in the city, sixty-five were already dead and most of the rest were wounded. Of 1,780 nurses, 1,654 were dead or too badly hurt to work. In the biggest hospital, that of the Red Cross, only six doctors out of thirty were able to function, and only ten nurses out of more than two hundred. The sole uninjured doctor on the Red Cross Hospital staff was Dr. Sasaki.”

In the second chapter, Hersey enters the story as omniscient narrator. After reporting through the eyes of the six characters, presenting to the reader only what they knew and when they knew it, he gradually adds information like the above, providing context. Hersey doles out facts and statistics selectively—just enough for readers to get a sense of the larger picture—while keeping the focus on the human stories.

“Miss Sasaki […] was grateful until he brought two horribly wounded people—a woman with a whole breast sheared off and a man whose face was all raw from a burn—to share the simple shed with her. No one came back.”

Hersey does not shy away from describing gruesome injuries. He does so with the same even tone he uses elsewhere, letting the facts speak for themselves. His decision to include such information suggests how strongly he wanted readers to learn the reality of nuclear war. He didn’t mince words when it came to its horrific effects.

“All day, people poured into Asano Park. This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.”

Hersey juxtaposes Asano Park, where refugees gathered after the bombing, with the charred destruction throughout most of the city. Asano Park suggests life’s tenacity, one of the book’s themes. Earlier Hersey describes destruction on an unprecedented scale; this depiction of nature provides a respite for the reader much like it did for the refugees who gathered there.

“At first, when they got among the rows of prostrate houses, they did not know where they were; the change was too sudden, from a busy city of two hundred and forty-five thousand that morning to a mere pattern of residue in the afternoon.”

Almost immediately after the previous passage, the author takes the reader back to scenes of destruction. Here he describes the enormous physical changes in the city. The destruction was so thorough that Rev. Tanimoto and the others practically got lost on their way on their way to Tanimoto’s neighborhood. There simply was nothing left, no landmarks to guide them. This erasure of the city took place in a matter of hours, reminding readers that this was no ordinary bomb that had been dropped.

“Father Kleinsorge filled the containers a third time and went back to the riverbank. There, amid the dead and dying, he saw a young woman with a needle and thread mending her kimono, which had been slightly torn. Father Kleinsorge joshed her. “My, but you’re a dandy!” he said. She laughed.”

Hersey includes this light interaction between Father Kleinsorge and a stranger in the middle of his description of the refugee situation in Asano Park. It provides a bit of comic relief, an example of the odd things people do and say in the middle of an emergency. While incongruent, it serves as a reminder of people’s humanity.

“Father Kleinsorge began to be thirsty in the dreadful heat, and he did not feel strong enough to go for water again. A little before noon, he saw a Japanese woman handing something out. Soon she came to him and said in a kindly voice, ‘These are tea leaves. Chew them, young man, and you won’t feel thirsty.’ The woman’s gentleness made Father Kleinsorge suddenly want to cry. For weeks, he had been feeling oppressed by the hatred of foreigners that the Japanese seemed increasingly to show, and he had been uneasy even with his Japanese friends. This stranger’s gesture made him a little hysterical.”

Passages like this explore The Commonalities of Humans. It highlights the kindness of strangers in the midst of a hellish situation. It also reflects the situation in America then, only in reverse: As a foreigner, a European, Kleinsorge felt discriminated against in Japan; the Japanese woman’s kindness made him feel part of one human race. In contrast, non-Japanese Americans in America discriminated against individuals of Japanese heritage; Hersey is subtly reminding readers of their shared humanity.

“About a week after the bomb dropped, a vague, incomprehensible rumor reached Hiroshima—that the city had been destroyed by the energy released when atoms were somehow split in two. The weapon was referred to in this word-of-mouth report as genshi bakudan—the root characters of which can be translated as ‘original child bomb.’”

This speaks to the newness of the nuclear bomb. Nobody on the ground, aside from trained physicists, knew just what had happened. Rumors, such that the Americans included powdered magnesium in the bomb, ran rampant. Even when the idea of nuclear fission was floated—correctly—people didn’t know what that meant. Again, Hersey is providing only the information known at the time in Japan. When he wrote this in 1946, much more was known about what had happened and nuclear bombs in general; he uses a limited viewpoint so that the story unfolds as it actually occurred.

“Disposal of the dead, by decent cremation and enshrinement, is a greater moral responsibility to the Japanese than adequate care of the living.”

Hersey introduces an aspect of Japanese culture—a great reverence for the dead. We also see this when Rev. Tanimoto’s feels guilt for not being hurt in the bombing; on the whole, survivors felt this way in the face of so many people losing their lives and not getting an adequate burial. Hersey presents this as just another detail in the story, like stating the weather or what color coat someone wore, de-emphasizing Japanese people as “the Other.”

“By now he was accustomed to the terrible scene through which he walked on his way into the city: the large rice field near the Novitiate, streaked with brown; the houses on the outskirts of the city, standing but decrepit, with broken windows and disheveled tiles; and then, quite suddenly, the beginning of the four square miles of reddish-brown scar, where nearly everything had been buffeted down and burned; range on range of collapsed city blocks, with here and there a crude sign erected on a pile of ashes and tiles (‘Sister, where are you?’ or ‘All safe and we live at Toyosaka’); naked trees and canted telephone poles; the few standing, gutted buildings only accentuating the horizontality of everything else (the Museum of Science and Industry, with its dome stripped to its steel frame, as if for an autopsy […]”

This rather long passage (truncated here) consists of a single sentence. Hersey piles up concrete images with a long list of nouns, along with some adjectives to describe them. He notes that a museum looked naked “as if for an autopsy.” Autopsies are performed on the dead, making this especially apt for the scene of a decimated city.

“Everywhere were bluets and Spanish bayonets, goosefoot, morning glories and day lilies, the hairy-fruited bean, purslane and clotbur and sesame and panic grass and feverfew.”

Toshiko Sasaki’s reacts to seeing the bombed-out remains of Hiroshima after about a month of being cooped up in the hospital. What stands out to her is not destruction, but the way nature has reasserted itself over the earth, reflecting The Simultaneous Fragility and Tenacity of Life. The characters are also moving on with their lives and finding ways to carry on. Hersey’s writing is specific, listing nouns and details.

“Because so many people were suddenly feeling sick nearly a month after the atomic bomb was dropped, an unpleasant rumor began to move around, and eventually it made its way to the house in Kabe where Mrs. Nakamura lay bald and ill. It was that the atomic bomb had deposited some sort of poison on Hiroshima which would give off deadly emanations for seven years; nobody could go there all that time. This especially upset Mrs. Nakamura, who remembered that in a moment of confusion on the morning of the explosion she had literally sunk her entire means of livelihood, her Sankoku sewing machine, in the small cement water tank in front of what was left of her house [...] ”

Passages like this help keep the focus on individuals. While the rumor about the poison, if true, would be devastating for the people of Hiroshima, Mrs. Nakamura’s reaction is personal. Poison would prevent her from retrieving the sewing machine—her only way of making a living. Such granular-level details help develop readers’ sympathy for the characters.

“Statistical workers gathered what figures they could on the effects of the bomb. They reported that 78,150 people had been killed, 13,983 were missing, and 37,425 had been injured. No one in the city government pretended that these figures were accurate—though the Americans accepted them as official—and as the months went by and more and more hundreds of corpses were dug up from the ruins […]”

Here is an instance where Hersey does provide more abstract, general information. It’s noteworthy that it comes in Chapter 4—what was originally the last chapter—after Hersey has delved deeply into the stories of the six main characters. Once he has the reader invested in their personal trials and tribulations, he widens the scope to provide more context. Though the numbers he provided are staggering, he presents them matter-of-factly, in keeping with his tone throughout the book.

“The Japanese scientists […] estimated that, even with the primitive bomb used at Hiroshima, it would require a shelter of concrete fifty inches thick to protect a human being entirely from radiation sickness. The scientists had these and other details which remained subject to security in the United States printed and mimeographed and bound into little books. The Americans knew of the existence of these, but tracing them and seeing that they did not fall into the wrong hands would have obliged the occupying authorities to set up, for this one purpose alone, an enormous police system in Japan. Altogether, the Japanese scientists were somewhat amused at the efforts of their conquerors to keep security on atomic fission.”

Hersey seems to be calling out the American authorities for censoring information about the bomb. He describes how much the Japanese knew by late 1945. He’s also informing Americans reading this at the time of its original publication in 1946 that they were purposely being kept in the dark about the details of the bomb. Hersey wanted as much information as possible out there, so all could see the horrors inflicted by the bomb.

“A surprising number of the people of Hiroshima remained more or less indifferent about the ethics of using the bomb. Possibly they were too terrified by it to want to think about it at all. Not many of them even bothered to find out much about what it was like. Mrs. Nakamura’s conception of it—and awe of it—was typical. ‘The atom bomb,’ she would say when asked about it, ‘is the size of a matchbox. The heat of it is six thousand times that of the sun. It exploded in the air. There is some radium in it. I don’t know just how it works, but when the radium is put together, it explodes.’”

This passage shows the range of people’s feelings toward the atomic bomb and the Americans who used it on Hiroshima. Throughout the book, Hersey notes that many survivors had no strong feelings either way about the morality of using a nuclear weapon. Most people also steered clear of politics in this area . For example, Mrs. Nakamura initially did not avail herself of the medical benefits the government created for hibakusha. Not everyone was so sanguine, however.

“Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was still racked by memories of the appalling days and nights right after the explosion—memories it would be his lifework to distance himself from.”

People dealt with the bombing in different ways. Whereas Rev. Tanimoto made it his life’s work to help survivors such as the A-Bomb Maidens and to establish a peace center in Hiroshima, Dr. Sasaki wanted to forget. Sasaki left his job at the Red Cross Hospital to open a clinic because the Red Cross Hospital was a constant reminder of his ordeal. Likewise, the work he performed at the clinic was varied but general in nature; he did not have to keep up with the latest research on radiation sickness.

“Long before this, doctors in Hiroshima had begun to find that there were much more serious consequences of exposure to the bomb than the traumatic wounds and keloid scars that had been so dramatically visible in the early days.”

This passage (truncated here) goes on to detail the many ailments caused by long-term radiation sickness, the full range of which was not known at the time the bomb dropped or when the original book was published a year later. Hersey’s tone remains objective even as he presents a list of horrible diseases and conditions that could fill a medical textbook. It makes one confront the morality of dropping the bomb.

“Her greatest gift, she found, was her ability to help inmates to die in peace. She had seen so much death in Hiroshima after the bombing, and had seen what strange things so many people did when they were cornered by death, that nothing now surprised or frightened her. The first time she stood watch by a dying inmate, she vividly remembered a night soon after the bombing when she had lain out in the open, uncared for, in dreadful pain, beside a young man who was dying. She had talked with him all night, and had become aware, above all, of his fearful loneliness. She had watched him die in the morning. At deathbeds in the home, she was always mindful of this terrible solitude. She would speak little to the dying person but would hold a hand or touch an arm, as an assertion, simply, that she was there.”

Toshiko Sasaki embodies The Simultaneous Fragility and Tenacity of Life. Of all six characters, she suffered the greatest immediate injury, lost her parents and baby brother, and was responsible for taking care of her two younger siblings without any real means of doing so. Yet she went on to have a successful and varied career as a Catholic nun, finding the strength with which to help others.

“Through a press code and other measures, General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander of the occupying forces, had strictly prohibited dissemination of or agitation for any reports on the consequences of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings—including the consequence of a desire for peace—and the officials evidently thought that Tanimoto’s peace center might get the local governments in trouble.”

This passage shows how the American government and military tried to control the narrative about the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even an innocuous proposal for a center devoted to promulgating future peace was seen as subversive. The Americans wanted to deflect any criticism about the use of nuclear weapons, and with the Cold War heating up they suspected ideas and activities that might be construed as communist. Rev. Tanimoto, however, persisted and privately established a peace center at his church. Though it initially had little influence, it became the foothold for a city-sponsored peace center later on.