John Hersey Hiroshima

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Erin Smith John Hersey’s Hiroshima: Devastating Aftermath that Rebuilds Community August 6th, 1945 at 8:15 am Hiroshima, Japan was brutally, without chance, bombed by the first atomic bomb from the United States. John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima, is a masterpiece, stories being told in the eyes of survivors recalling this horrendous time. These recollected memories expose this gruesome attack for what it was, pure evil. Genocide could be a word used to describe this time in history, furthermore the Japanese never cried for retribution. Community is what they were in search for to rebuild their world. These characters, real human beings, give us a chance to attempt understanding of their lives, and the changing of their world after this nuclear attack. Through extreme and concerning graphic detail of human torment and of physical effects such as radiation and burns caused by the dropping of the atomic bomb, Hersey illustrates to the reader the deeply disturbing physical impact of this nuclear assault, and also of the immense strength some of these people show in the rebuilding of their lives. These characters “hardly realized that their old familiar life had ended, that they had been chosen by chance, or destiny, or—as two of them at any rate would have…show more content…
There are few people interviewed that seem to not make a big impact in the stories told through Hiroshima; the Nakamuras, the Kataoka children, Mrs. Kamai and her dead baby. Most of the characters that are emphasized have family but are representative of themselves; Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Fuji, Miss Sassaki, etc. There was no unified political or national response for what had happened, but there was this effect; the community coming together. “One feeling they did seem to share, however, was a curious kind of elated community spirit… a pride in the way they and their fellow-survivors had stood up to a dreadful ordeal.”

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