Hiroshima | 
| Author: John Hersey
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $6.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  195 reviews
Sales Rank: 3023
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7 x 4.2 x 0.4
ISBN: 0679721037
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5425
EAN: 9780679721031
ASIN: 0679721037
Publication Date: March 4, 1989
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Amazon.com
When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, few could have anticipated its potential for devastation. Pulitzer prize-winning author John Hersey recorded the stories of Hiroshima residents shortly after the explosion and, in 1946, Hiroshima was published, giving the world first-hand accounts from people who had survived it. The words of Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamara, Father Kleinsorg, Dr. Sasaki, and the Reverend Tanimoto gave a face to the statistics that saturated the media and solicited an overwhelming public response. Whether you believe the bomb made the difference in the war or that it should never have been dropped, "Hiroshima" is a must read for all of us who live in the shadow of armed conflict.
Product Description
On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atom bomb ever dropped on a city. This book, John Hersey's journalistic masterpiece, tells what happened on that day. Told through the memories of survivors, this timeless, powerful and compassionate document has become a classic "that stirs the conscience of humanity" (The New York Times).
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 is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 190 more reviews...
 Testament to both man's violence and unselfish nurturing July 3, 2008
There are works of fiction and nonfiction that transcend their genres. This is one of those works, one that should be required reading for high school students, or, at the very least, for college students, if it isn't already. The horror that was the A-bomb unleashed unbridled power over the city of Hiroshima. Arguments could be made for both the necessity for the bomb to end the war, as well as the unnecessary and catastrophic violence unleashed.
Either way you argue, Hersey's Hiroshima shows the true nature of the bomb from when it was dropped, the after effects, and the resulting long term medical problems the Hibukusha had to live with for the rest of their lives. I was awestruck at the description of what had happened, at times shaking my head at the power of such a bomb. Soldiers who had their eyes melted out of their sockets, people whose skin was slophing off, skinned burned off leaving raw and puss covered skin.
These are of course present throughout Hersey's account, for how could we see what the survivors of Hiroshima went through if the descriptions are not there as well? We see unselfish and caring individuals putting their own health and safety at risk to help others worse off. We see the strength of human nature to struggle on despite the hopeless feeling that imbedded into all who were present.
Hersey does a great job showing what happened, with people whose lives are all interrelated and connected in sundry ways, as well as to show how their lives carried on in the years after the A-bomb had been dropped. This is most certainly a recommend for young and old alike, and I would recommend it to all, regardless of the genre's they prefer to read.
5 stars.
It might be different if it was written today.... May 14, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
My daughter is reading it for a 9th grade class. I skimmed through looking for the telltale signs of Modern Liberal indoctrination. Unlike her Human Geography book, which is loaded with Socialist thinking, this book is genuine in following several characters as they dealt with their lives after the destruction.
As some other readers pointed out (I didn't read every review), Hersey doesn't dwell on the moral issues. It's a genuine look at the characters. It's written in a rather dry style that lets the characters stories speak for themselves and allows the reader to form his or her own conclusions.
(Now, if this book was written today or maybe by someone else, I wouldn't be surprised if the book was more of anti-war/anti-human tome that is typical of today's Modern Liberals. I'm talking about the now-normal attacks on Western Civilization, American exceptionalism, Conservatism, Bush, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if they found a way to say Halliburton was involved in the building of the bomb or that one of Cheney's uncles was key. If you want to learn about Modern Liberals, watch the video at YouTube called "How Modern Liberals Think" by Evan Sayet. As Amazon pulls urls off these reviews, just go to YouTube and search on "Evan Sayet" and pick the "How Modern Liberals Think" video.)
Anyways, if you want a book on the human aspects of some of the people bombed, then you may enjoy this book. Just remember, the alternative to bombing was many more deaths.
Highly recommended April 21, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I assigned this book to my AP and Dual credit kids to give them an idea of what occurred during the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I explained the events, showed pictures, but nothing prepared them for what they read in this book. This book is second only to accounts of the Jewish Holocaust in effectiveness to reach students who do not understand these events.
Unfortunately, there is a Spark notes version which students tend to rely upon instead of reading this book. Please don't do this, you are missing out.
Explication of Hiroshima March 6, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
In Hiroshima, John Hersey elucidates the entirety of his journalistic work in the introductory paragraph of the piece.
It starts by situating the reader in the context: "At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time [...]" (1). The use of the word `exact' is significant - it foreshadows the immense precision with which Hersey reports his factual account of the events that ensue. Additionally, the inclusion of the phrase `Japanese time' emphasizes the fact that the information is presented from a Japanese perspective; Japanese cultural mores and beliefs are integrated into the text and Hersey acclimates us to this environment by employing it in the first line of the novel.
He then depicts what each of six characters is in the act of doing at the moment the atomic bomb was detonated on the city of Hiroshima. This introduces what he writes from page 2 to 16 of the novel, in which he creates scenes to illuminate the lives of Mr. Tanimoto, Mrs. Nakamura, Dr. Fujii, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki, and Miss Sasaki, respectively, at that specific moment, 8:15 a.m., August 6th, 1945.
This is a cocoon of the structure of his book - these characters demarcate the transitions in the text. In the opening paragraph, the persona momentarily shifts the point of view of the narrative to each character. Throughout the novel, the persona repeats this technique to advance the plot.
On page 2, there is a conscious shift from the simultaneous snapshot of each of the six characters to a broadened point of view to the hundred thousand people that were killed during the event. The final sentence of the first paragraph is integral to the book: "At the time, none of them knew anything." The grammatical construction of this sentence is significant: `none,' an indefinite pronoun, does not refer to a specific person. It can be either singular or plural, which furthers its obscurity. `Anything' is another indefinite pronoun. Thus, this statement is imbued with tremendous ambiguity.
Furthermore, the antecedent to the objective personal pronoun `them' is not explicitly stated, and it can refer to the six survivors or it can allude to the one hundred thousand dead that Hersey mentions four sentences previously. This renders the sentence virtually meaningless, yet it is this lack of meaning that Hersey deliberately crafts to encapsulate the utter incomprehensibility that these people, and the population as a whole, feels regarding the issue of this event and its implications for humanity.
In the course of Hiroshima, Hersey echoes this statement when he depicts a scene in which Father Kleinsorge visits Miss Sasaki in the hospital and she questions his faith. The persona states, "And he went on to explain all the reasons for everything" (83). `All' and `everything' are indefinite pronouns that ultimately engender a vague sentence. He is referring to abstract ideas that are beyond comprehension. By repeating his structural paradigm of ending a passage with a void statement, he ostensibly creates an analogy to the epigraphical "At the time, none of them knew anything."
Hersey's tale a grim but important one to tell February 21, 2008
Journalist John Hersey's non-fiction account of the atomic bomb blast on Hiroshima, Japan, was originally published in the August 31, 1946 edition of The New Yorker magazine, before becoming a best-selling book. In four chapters, Hersey covers a year in the life of six people--five natural-born Japanese and one German national--who survived the American attack on their beloved city. Chapter One, A Noiseless Flash, begins with the detonation of the bomb, "At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time" and ends moments later, shortly before the city catches on fire. The principal witnesses to the destruction are introduced: Miss Toshiko Susaki, "a clerk"; Masakazu Fujii, a doctor who works in a private hospital; Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a widow with three children; Dr. Terufumi Susaki (unrelated to the clerk), who is on the staff of the Red Cross Hospital; Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a Methodist; and Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a Jesuit priest of Germany, which was an ally to Japan in World War II.
The book begins without any setup other than the time, place, and central--real-life--characters. The background to the conflict is conspicuously absent, as are facts regarding political, military or geographical concerns surrounding WWII. Hersey assumes the reader has lived through the war, is current on all the pertinent details of the air- and ground-battle, so he wastes no printed space on the world leaders, generals, or military brigades in favor of devoting all of his energy to the civilians. In particular, the innocent victims of the end-game move by American president Harry Truman are who most concern the writer, and the book gathers their personal, eyes-on-the-ground experiences into a compelling narrative that encompasses not only six people, but an entire city.
Each eyewitness has a distinct personality, a specific lifestyle before the blast, and a horrific story to tell of its aftermath. In the three chapters following the introductory chapter, their six individual odysseys for survival and understanding converge and overlap. The interlacing narrative structure gives the reader a full perspective of the days and months after the atomic attack on Hiroshima, with six varying viewpoints organized into one fluid tale.
Hersey takes the reader through the city's "clouded air...giving off a thick, dreadful miasma" primarily through the subjective lens of those who saw it first-hand, but he doesn't limit his reporting to that narrow scope. He also offers many objectively reported facts and provides a larger perspective on the situation throughout the book, revealing details that the denizens of the devastated city were never privvy to, but which expand the reader's understanding of their closed narrative. When the reader learns that, directly following the atomic blast, sixty-five of a hundred and fifty doctors died instantly, and that the majority of the remaining M.D.s were wounded, the story takes on a heightened sense of dread that would be missing without that information. The plight of the survivors becomes even more grim for the reader at this point, and the drama of their personal journeys becomes more immediate and emotionally wrenching.
The narrative voice of the author is extremely matter-of-fact, without any "commenting" on the actions or thoughts of the six people, nor any subjective commentary on those responsible for the dropping of a bomb that killed over a hundred thousand Japanese and injured thirty-seven thousand more. He lets the experiences of those who were there speak for themselves, and despite the occasional contextual bit of information, Hersey depends solely on their testimonies to tell the story.
The details are often graphic, with physical descriptions of burned and bloody corpses, vomiting children, maimed and ravaged survivors, as well as drowned and bloated dead. The tone has a somberness throughout, with a sense of compassion for those who suffered this ordeal felt within the narrative. The gruesome facts are given in an unflinching manner, yet there is temperance shown by Hersey, with the focus not so much on the devastation, but on the selflessness and hope the people of Hiroshima display in the face of chaos and confusion. They suffer physical pain, emotional hardships, yet all emerge somehow more closely attached to their community and to their fellow human beings. As Hersey writes near the end of the book, "One thing that they (the six people) did seem to share...was a kind of elated community spirit...a pride in the way they and their fellow-survivors had stood up to a dreadful ordeal." When the reader reaches the final page of this short yet powerful book, that dreadful ordeal has been illuminated, humanized, and masterfully realized by a writer whose personal agenda seems only to be the reporting of the untold truth.
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