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Hiroshima
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Table of Contents
Life and Background of the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Personal Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Career Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Introduction to the Novel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Brief Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
List of Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Map of Hiroshima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Critical Commentaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Chapter One: “A Noiseless Flash” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Chapter Two: “The Fire” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter Three: “Details Are Being Investigated” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Chapter Four: “Panic Grass and Feverfew” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Chapter Five: “The Aftermath” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
iv
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Character Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Miss Toshiko Sasaki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Dr. Masakazu Fujii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
The Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Critical Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Events Surrounding the First Atomic Bombs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
CliffsNotes Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
CliffsNotes Resource Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Table of Contents
v
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LIFE AND
BACKGROUND
OF THE AUTHOR
Personal Background
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
Career Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
2
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Personal Background
John Richard Hersey was born in Tientsin, China, on June 17, 1914,
to American missionaries Roscoe M. and Grace (Baird) Hersey. Growing up in China, Hersey was out of the mainstream when it came to
American attitudes and culture. He spoke Chinese fluently. Hersey exercised his imagination with reading and writing. He attended the British
Grammar School and the American School. Later in life, he reported
that his memories of growing up in China included a pretty “normal”
childhood.
Education
A major change occurred when Hersey was ten: His father became
ill with encephalitis, and the family returned to America and settled in
Briarcliff Manor, New York. Hersey became thoroughly “Americanized”
during his adolescence. He attended Hotchkiss Preparatory School,
where he worked as a waiter and janitor. His undergraduate years were
spent at Yale University from 1932 to 1936. Graduating from Yale,
Hersey continued his education on a Mellon Scholarship at Clare College, Cambridge University, where he studied eighteenth century English literature. At both Yale and Cambridge, he worked in various jobs
as a waiter, librarian, lifeguard, and tutor. Hersey never experienced a
life of privilege, and it is possible that the jobs he held while attending
college gave him a sympathy for the “common man” that would later
show up in his writings.
Early Career
During the summer of 1937, Hersey was a secretary and gofer for
Sinclair Lewis. He left that employment in the fall to apprentice at Time
magazine, a business relationship that would extend through 1945. In
1939, he returned to China as a war correspondent at the Chungking
bureau of Time. In this capacity, he traveled throughout China and
Japan, sending dispatches of military action and interviewing important leaders. During his career, Hersey’s writings appeared in Time, Life,
and the New Yorker.
Hersey married twice during his lifetime and had four children.
In 1940, he married Frances Ann Cannon, the daughter of a cotton
goods manufacturer in Charlotte, North Carolina. They had three
Life and Background of the Author
3
children: Martin Cannon, John Richard, Jr., and Baird. This marriage
ended in divorce in 1958. He later married Barbara Day Addams
Kaufman. They had a daughter, Brook.
Hersey published two books in 1942 and 1943: Men on Bataan and
Into the Valley. Men on Bataan is an account of the fighting in the Philippines. It contains fifty stories of enlisted men, as well as chapters about
General MacArthur. The book, which received positive reviews, reveals
Hersey’s concerns with how democracy could function in a time of war.
Hersey’s experience in the South Pacific and at the Battle of the
Solomons led to his month-long stay on Guadalcanal. He experienced
war firsthand and saw the terrible hardships that were placed on the
fighting men. For helping evacuate the wounded, Hersey later received
a letter of commendation from Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Into
the Valley, published in 1943, is about the experiences of the fighting
men in the Pacific Theater. Here, Hersey studied the combat soldier’s
reaction to danger, the war, and the enemies. He began a theme that
would continue throughout his career: his study of why and how men
survived under terrible conditions. Survival became a key idea in his
thinking and writing.
From 1943 to 1945, Hersey worked out of Sicily and Russia. During
this time, many of his writings for Life magazine were about returning
veterans, the victims of war, and the occupation troops. He also wrote
about John F. Kennedy’s heroic experience with the PT 109, continuing
his interest in survival under harsh conditions.
Career Highlights
A Bell for Adano was published in 1944 and won Hersey the Pulitzer
Prize on May 8, 1945. It is the story of a small, occupied village in Italy
that is temporarily run by Major Victor Joppolo, the military governor
and a man of Italian descent, who tries to teach democratic ideals to the
villagers. Joppolo attempts to retrieve the town’s missing bell, which had
rung in the steeple for 700 years. Various town characters appear, and
General Marvin, the antagonist of the story, thwarts Joppolo in his
efforts. While some see Marvin as a thinly veiled George S. Patton, others interpret him as an example of the dangers of modern corporate society or the nation state, running operations with expediency at a cost to
individual freedoms. Hersey developed his story after studying the work
of a military governor for an article for Life. His novel is a hymn to the
common man who steps up to a position where he can help people. An
4
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
example of democracy in action, Hersey’s story was turned into both a
Broadway play and a motion picture. Then, from 1944 to 1945, he was
on assignment in China and Japan for Life and the New Yorker.
In 1946, he published Hiroshima first in its entirety in the New Yorker
on August 31, and later as a novel in October. Based on the explosion of
the first nuclear bomb in 1945, the novel attempts to take the extraordinary and inexplicable event and show how it impacts ordinary human
lives. It personalized the event so that Americans, as well as a worldwide
audience, could begin to understand the repercussions of the bombing.
The 1950s saw four more books from Hersey, beginning with The
Wall in 1950. Hersey had seen the German concentration camps in
Estonia and the Warsaw ruins where 500,000 Jews had died. His book
confronted the ability of man to deal with totalitarian governments and
posed the question, “Can man be morally responsible for himself?”
Again he personalized an event of unimaginable horror. In 1953, he
published The Marmot Drive, a novel about New England that studied
modern lives cut off from the traditions of the past. It received poor
reviews. A Single Pebble, published in 1956, was about the journey of a
young American engineer up the Yangtze River during the 1920s. It
allowed Hersey to consider his relationship as a modern American with
the Orient. In 1959, Hersey published The War Lover, continuing a
theme of the paradox of those who love war and fight an enemy within.
The dilemma is how can a man so love to make war and kill but also
learn a natural reverence for life? Admiration for a man’s will to survive
instead of a love of killing is what finally comes through in Hiroshima.
Teaching
By 1960, Hersey turned his efforts to education, racism, and the
disenchantment of 1960’s students. He wrote The Child Buyer in 1960,
a novel that reflected some of the educational thinking of that time.
Hersey was keenly aware of the movement to produce more scientists,
technicians, mathematicians, and engineers at the expense of schools
that foster individual fulfillment. Returning to his theme of survival,
Hersey wrote Here to Stay in 1963, a series of articles about people who
survived in the face of natural disasters. A history of the African American in the U.S. titled White Lotus, written in 1965, is an ambitious
book that tells the story of racial history in America by paralleling the
enslavement of Caucasians by the Chinese. The disenchantment of the
mid-1960s is the subject of Too Far to Walk, published in 1966.
Life and Background of the Author
5
During the period from 1965 to 1970, Hersey returned to Yale as
Master of Pierson College. There he taught, mentored, and wrote books
that dramatized and personalized issues such as fascism, racism, and the
Holocaust. He spent 1970 to 1971 on leave from Yale at the American
Academy in Rome. His relationship with Yale continued as an adjunct
professor of English until his retirement in 1984.
Later Years
In his august years, Hersey continued to write on issues of modern
society. He wrote two nonfiction books about education and racism
called The Algiers Motel Incident (1968) and Letter to the Alumni (1970).
The Conspiracy (1972) used Roman history to explore issues of modern
society. Hersey edited The Writer’s Craft in 1974, a book of essays about
writing. In this particular edition, Hersey included an interview with
Ralph Ellison.
During the 1980s, Hersey continued to write and also visit sites from
his past. In June 1980, he published Aspects of the Presidency. The
following year, he visited Tientsin and a number of Chinese sites that
he had not seen since 1946. The highly personal novel The Call and a
new edition of Hiroshima with an epilogue on the fortieth anniversary
of the bombing were published in 1985. In addition to these writings
and trips were two novels called Blues in 1987 and Life Sketches in 1989.
His last publication was in 1990—a book of stories called Fling and
Other Stories.
John Hersey preferred to call his books “novels of contemporary history” instead of the more widely used “nonfiction novels.” No matter
how Hersey’s novels are classified, they delve into issues of any society—
issues such as racism, education, democracy, and personal freedom.
Hersey had an amazing ability to take extreme disasters of epic proportion such as the Holocaust or the detonating of a nuclear bomb and
personalize them so that the average reader could feel their impact on
the individual. His faith in democracy and his belief in the ability of
the common person to take on heroic tasks were continuing themes in
his career as an author and journalist.
Throughout his career, John Hersey was active in organizations as a
writer and involved in public issues as a private citizen. He joined the
Authors League of America in 1948, becoming an officer and an active
member. In 1953, he was the youngest writer ever asked to join the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1954, he became a member
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
of the National Citizens Committee for the Public Schools and pursued his interest in writing and speaking about education. At the White
House Arts Festival in 1965, he did a public reading from Hiroshima.
Before his death in 1993, Hersey was recognized by Yale University
for his contributions to journalism and literature. Yale established
the annual John Hersey Lecture, an avenue for bringing writers to the
campus to talk about their work. Hersey died on March 24, 1993, at
the age of 78.
INTRODUCTION
TO THE NOVEL
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Brief Synopsis
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
List of Characters
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Map of Hiroshima
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
8
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Introduction
In September 1945, young John Hersey was sent to the Far East
on assignment for the New Yorker and Life magazines. He had already
published three books, Men on Bataan, Into the Valley, and A Bell for
Adano, with the latter bringing him the Pulitzer Prize earlier in May.
His original intention was to write a piece about Hiroshima based on
what he could see in the ruins of the city and what he could hear about
the bombing from its survivors. In Tokyo, Hersey met Father Wilhelm
Kleinsorge, the German priest of his book. Hersey soon added five more
survivors to the book by interviewing people Kleinsorge directed him
to as well as by screening many other Japanese survivors. Hersey wrote
the story and brought it back to William Shawn, the general manager
of the New Yorker, in August 1946.
What happened next was amazing. The magazine determined that
Hiroshima would be run in serialized form, spread into three parts. But
as the top brass looked at the story, they began to conceive another plan.
Mr. Shawn and the founder and editor, Harold Ross, decided to run the
entire story in their August 31 issue. This had not been done before; it
would certainly be new territory for the readers of the New Yorker. Hersey
spent ten days rewriting the story to fit the magazine’s format, and then
it hit the newsstands with everyone waiting to see the reaction.
What would the reading public think, especially the loyal readers of
the New Yorker?
The reaction was unexpected and astonishing. Newsstands could
not keep copies of the New Yorker on their shelves. Newspapers from
Rhode Island to London asked for the serial rights to print the story.
Albert Einstein ordered 1,000 copies. The Book-of-the-Month Club
sent out free copies. The ABC broadcasting system read it aloud on
hundreds of its stations. While some reviews were critical of the writing style, others praised the slim volume for its ability to take an event
that most people had simply read about in the newspapers and put it
into the context of individual lives. The human mind had trouble imagining statistics such as the hundreds of thousands of people who were
immediately killed by the atomic bomb, but it could understand the
effect of the event on the lives of the survivors in John Hersey’s writing.
Hersey came by his topics and form through many years as a
reporter. By the age of 31, he already had thousands of miles logged in
as a writer from all the years spent covering the Far East and the war
Introduction to the Novel
9
itself. He was used to reporting facts and sending back dispatches to
periodicals in the United States. When he wrote A Bell for Adano the
year before, he shaped it as a fictional story but loosely based the characters on people he really knew. There was no question of its fictional
nature; even the bell of the title was a figment of Hersey’s imagination.
But Hiroshima was different. In Hiroshima, Hersey displayed his amazing talents as a listener. After hours and days and weeks of listening, he
assembled a multitude of hand-written notes from his subjects. As they
told him their stories from their own point of view, Hersey faithfully
recorded their perceptions, just as a good journalist would do. He also
thought about how he understood the facts of those days in August
1945, through the feelings and viewpoints of those he interviewed.
Hersey quietly contributed to their narrations by deciding which facts
to use and the order in which to assemble them. He wanted to go beyond
the facts as the survivors saw them and get to deeper truths about that
day. To their narratives, he would add information about the governments
and their dictums, the scientific explanations of what had happened, and
some of the medical repercussions (as far as they could be determined).
His own voice was absent or understated considerably—he let the stories
of the survivors do the talking. To assemble the stories in the best possible dramatic sequence, he had to consider each story’s effect on the reader
carefully.
What is left out of the book is equally informative. Nowhere does
Hersey state specifically what he thought of that day or its aftermath.
Nowhere does he discuss nuclear disarmament. (Although he does mention escalating landmarks in the arms race.) Nowhere will the reader
find Hersey’s stated reactions to the narratives of the survivors, other
than an occasional ironic comment. Nowhere does he question or agree
with the decision to drop the bomb. Instead, he allows readers to draw
their own conclusions from the facts as he perceives them through his
understanding of the stories of “the lucky ones.”
In examining Hersey’s life and career, the reader can clearly see that
his writing over 50 years spanned the gamut of social issues, including
education, individual rights, censorship, racism, the Holocaust, and the
restlessness and polarized factions of the 1960s. Throughout his career,
he felt a responsibility to speak out both in the world of the journalist
and in the world of the private citizen. In effect, Hiroshima is the best
of both worlds: the factual, journalistic style of the gifted reporter and
the responsibility of the citizen to break the silence.
10
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Most importantly, long after John Hersey’s death, generations of
readers who were never there in 1945 are able to understand the effect
of the first atomic bomb on the people who survived its detonation. The
human mind cannot fathom the split-second deaths of 100,000 people,
but it can understand the enormity of the event by witnessing the lives
of six people who survived it. In the fictional A Bell for Adano, Hersey
used an ordinary man of Italian heritage for the hero of his story. Major
Victor Joppolo is a man of the people who tries to teach democracy to
the villagers he is serving; the reader’s sympathy is with him. Throughout many of Hersey’s books, he championed the ordinary person,
whether a fighting soldier or a young American engineer in China. What
better person than someone with whom the reader can identify to explain
the enormity of an event as devastating as the deployment of the first
atomic bomb?
John Hersey’s journalism, his understated viewpoint, and his deep
concern for speaking out responsibly all come together in Hiroshima.
The world responded and continues to respond to his ability to state
simply and clearly the stories of six ordinary people who became extraordinary on a day they never could have envisioned in their lives’ plans.
Hiroshima is eloquent and timeless—it speaks with conviction and
evokes the compassion and understanding of all ages and races.
Brief Synopsis
On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb is dropped from an
American plane on the 245,000 residents of Hiroshima, Japan. Most
of the city is destroyed and thousands of its inhabitants die. Some of its
citizens survive and suffer the debilitating effects of terrible burns and
radiation illness. The lives of six of those survivors are recounted in the
days following the bombing.
When the bomb detonates, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura is watching her
neighbor’s house and overseeing her sleeping children; all end up covered
in debris when their house is destroyed. Miss Toshiko Sasaki, an office
clerk, is leaning over to speak to a fellow worker when she is blasted out
of her desk and trapped under heavy bookcases. She sustains a severely
broken leg. A medical doctor, Masakazu Fujii, is reading on his porch
when he is catapulted into a river and squeezed between two large
timbers. Still another doctor, Terufumi Sasaki, falls to the floor in the
Introduction to the Novel
11
corridor of the Red Cross Hospital and gazes in wonder at the scene
outside the window. Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge awakens in the vegetable
garden of the Catholic mission house, injured and dazed. The Reverend
Kiyoshi Tanimoto throws himself between two large rocks and is hit with
debris from a nearby house. Most of the six survivors are hurt, but they
are all alive.
In the hours following the bombing, each survivor attempts to free
himself or herself, find loved ones, and help others if possible. Dr. Sasaki
grabs bandages and works 19 hours at a time, trying to bandage the
10,000 injured people making their way to his hospital. In the hours
and days after the bombing, he becomes an automaton, going from one
patient to another. Dr. Fujii, injured badly himself, attempts to help
his nurses and find his way to his family’s home where he can get first
aid supplies. Mrs. Nakamura works relentlessly to uncover her three
children in the debris; they appear unhurt but dazed and shaken. She
takes them to Asano Park where they can find some shelter under trees.
Miss Sasaki spends days and hours in the debris, but she is finally
rescued although semi-conscious and in pain and left in a lean-to. Father
Kleinsorge helps those trapped under houses and makes his way to
Asano Park along with Mr. Tanimoto. Both ministers help people in
the park put out fires and get medical help.
During the evening of August 6, the survivors struggle to endure and
help each other. The city is a ball of flame, and the park is filled with
radiation rain and whirlwinds. The suffering of thousands of people and
their wounds and burns are described repeatedly. Mr. Tanimoto must
remind himself that these creatures are human beings. Relentlessly, he
ferries boatloads of people upstream to get to higher ground. Several
injured priests and the Nakamura family are evacuated to the Novitiate
in the hills. The injured and dying are so numerous that the doctors no
longer help the badly injured because they are not going to survive. Miss
Sasaki is finally evacuated and begins many days and weeks of being
moved from one hospital or aid station to another.
As time goes by, order is slowly restored, but the overwhelming scene
of misery and human suffering is a sharp counterpoint to the official
news released from various governments. On August 9, a second bomb
is dropped, this time on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. On August 15,
the Emperor of Japan gives a radio address telling his people that Japan
has surrendered.
12
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Next, the horrible revelations of radiation illness commence.
Dr. Kleinsorge must go to a hospital in Tokyo. He will never again
regain his energy or health. Miss Sasaki, also in a hospital, is so depressed
over being crippled for the rest of her life that her doctor asks Father
Kleinsorge to visit her. Dr. Sasaki spends months and years analyzing
the effects of the radiation and how best to treat it; he marries and
begins a medical practice. Dr. Fujii also opens a medical practice and
begins socializing with the occupation officers. Mrs. Nakamura and her
children lose their hair and suffer from various illnesses, but because
they are so poor, they cannot afford to see a doctor. Mr. Tanimoto
attempts to operate his church out of his badly destroyed home. The
survivors struggle on with the effects of the radiation, and attempt to
find ways to manage despite their injuries.
A fifth chapter, “The Aftermath,” was added later, detailing the lives
of the survivors after the bombing (up to 1985). Mrs. Nakamura is
receiving medical help for her many radiation illnesses and staying away
from political rallies by the survivors, who are now called “hibakusha.”
The hibakusha have become the targets of politics and the peace movement. Mrs. Nakamura’s children are grown, and she has retired from a
job at a chemical company. Dr. Sasaki ran a lucrative medical practice.
He lost his wife to cancer, and he is still haunted by the souls of those
who died as a result of the bombing. Father Kleinsorge spent many years
ill, both in and out of the hospital. In 1976, he slipped and fell on ice,
resulting in fractures that left him bedridden. The following year he
weakened, became comatose, and died. Miss Sasaki endured numerous
surgeries on her leg. She converted to Catholicism and became a nun,
helping people die in peace. Dr. Fujii died of cancer, but his life after the
bombing was one of wealth and the pursuit of pleasure. The Reverend
Tanimoto, after traveling to America several times to raise money to aid
the hibakusha, has retired quietly, living out the rest of his life with vague
memories that day forty years ago.
List of Characters
Miss Toshiko Sasaki A twenty-year-old personnel department
clerk for the East Asia Tin Works. On August 6, 1945, she is at work.
When the bomb explodes, she is buried in the debris and her leg is
crushed under heavy bookcases. She survives, raises her siblings, and
converts to Catholicism, becoming a nun.
Introduction to the Novel
13
Dr. Masakazu Fujii Prosperous and fifty years old, he owns a
single-doctor hospital overlooking the Kyo River. After the bomb
explodes, he finds himself in the river, suspended between two timbers, but with his head above water. He helps many people despite
his injuries. He restores a modest medical practice and eventually
accompanies Japanese survivors when they have plastic surgery in
the U.S.
Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura A widow of a tailor, Isawa, who was
killed in the war, she has had a hard life, taking in piecework to support three children. When the bomb is dropped that morning, she
and her children are buried under debris in their house. She leads
her children to Asano Park, where they are evacuated to the Jesuit
Novitiate. In later years, she works for a chemical company that gives
her financial security and sees her children marry and leave home.
Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge This German priest, a member
of the Society of Jesus, is reading on the third floor of the mission
house when the bomb explodes. After the explosion, he finds himself dazed and wandering in the garden, bleeding from cuts. He
selflessly helps people who are injured from the bombing. He later
becomes a Japanese citizen. Father Kleinsorge suffers from radiation sickness at various times all throughout the rest of his life.
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki An idealistic twenty-five-year-old member
of the surgical staff at the Red Cross Hospital. He miraculously survives the bombing because he is walking down a hallway of the
hospital in a relatively protected area. He is the only doctor unhurt
at the hospital. Tirelessly, he treats people after the bombing. He
later marries, raises a family, and continues his medical practice,
becoming a wealthy man.
Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto Educated at Emory College in
Atlanta, Georgia, this Methodist minister has adopted American
ways and speaks English fluently. When the bomb detonates, he is
in Koi, away from the center of the city. He survives the bombing
by jumping between two large rocks. After finding out that his
family is safe, he goes to Asano Park and aids people who are suffering. Eventually he raises money to help the Japanese hibakusha
(“explosion affected persons”).
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Map of Hiroshima
Hypocenter (the ground beneath the explosion)
HIROSHIMA, JAPAN
AUGUST, 1945
Ota
Riv
er
Areas of greatest destruction
1 Dr. Fujii
2 Father Kleinsorge
3 Mrs. Nakamura
4 Dr. Sasaki
3
6
6 Rev. Tanimoto
2
5
1
Aio Bridge
Honkawa R
R
Motoyasu
4
Tenma
R
East Drill Field
Hiroshima Bay
Kyo
bas
hi R
5 Miss Sasaki
Sea of Japan
HIROSHIMA
NAGASAKI
HU
NS
O
H
Pacific
Ocean
CRITICAL
COMMENTARIES
Chapter One: “A Noiseless Flash” . . . .16
Chapter Two: “The Fire” . . . . . . . . . . . .24
Chapter Three: “Details Are
Being Investigated” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Chapter Four: “Panic Grass
and Feverfew” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39
Chapter Five: “The Aftermath” . . . . . . .45
16
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Chapter One
“A Noiseless Flash”
Summary
It is early morning on August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima, Japan. At 7:00
a.m. a loud siren warns of an impending American bombing raid. The
“all-clear siren” sounds an hour later. At 8:15 a.m. Japanese time, an
atomic bomb is dropped from an American airplane on the 245,000
residents of this city. The bomb kills 100,000 people, but others survive by chance, by fate, by decisions made in a moment, and by being
in fortuitous locations. Six of the survivors—separated by miles and
minutes—do not realize at the time that a massive bomb has destroyed
much of the city and has killed thousands in a split second.
Author John Hersey follows these six survivors and relates their
experiences. They are Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel
department of the East Asia Tin Works; Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a medical
doctor who is reading on the porch of his residence; Mrs. Hatsuyo
Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, who is listening to the silence of her
sleeping children and watching a neighbor’s house; Father Wilhelm
Kleinsorge, who is reading on the third floor of the mission house;
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young surgeon at the Red Cross Hospital, who
is walking through the hospital’s corridor with a blood specimen in his
hand; and the Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a Methodist minister,
who is unloading his daughter’s belongings at the home of a friend.
Each of the six survivors describes his or her experience. Each survivor
is described by his or her actions, location, and position after the bomb
detonates. Early that morning, the Reverend Tanimoto and a friend push
a handcart through the city streets, moving some belongings of Tanimoto’s
daughter to an area called Koi. When the bomb detonates, the minister’s
face is turned away from the city. But he feels pressure, and then splinters, boards, and fragments of tile from the nearby house landing on him.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura is tired from the air-raid sirens
that signaled false alarms during the night. When the all-clear sounds
around 8 a.m., she lets her three children sleep. The bomb explodes,
Critical Commentaries: Chapter One
17
and Mrs. Nakamura sees a tremendous white flash and is hurled across
the room, along with parts of her house. She is stunned but is not deeply
covered in debris. She can hear one of her children crying and sees that
another, her youngest daughter, is buried up to her chest in debris
and unable to move. From her other children, Mrs. Nakamura hears
nothing.
The third survivor, Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a prosperous doctor, has
arisen early to see a friend off on a train. When the first siren sounds at
7 a.m., he is back home and undressed down to his underwear, reading the paper on his porch. Suddenly, he sees a flash of brilliant yellow,
and he is hurled into the river, his house turned into debris. Everything
happens so quickly. Dr. Fujii feels the water and discovers that he is still
alive, but he is squeezed between two timbers; the physician’s head is
above water, but his body is wedged tightly beneath it.
This same morning, Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge is resting on a cot
on the third floor of the mission house of the Society of Jesus. He sees
a terrible flash, like a meteor colliding with the earth. For a few
moments, the priest remembers nothing. He then he awakens in the
vegetable garden of the mission, bleeding from small cuts on his left
side and wearing nothing but his underwear.
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young doctor at the Red Cross Hospital in
Hiroshima, came into work this morning from his mother’s home in
the country. In the corridor of the hospital, the doctor sees the flash
through an open window and falls down. The blast rips through the
hospital, breaking Sasaki’s glasses and the bottle of blood he was
holding, but he is survives and is untouched. Automatically, he begins
helping people.
In yet another part of town, Miss Toshiko Sasaki (not related to the
doctor) is sitting down to her clerk’s job at her desk in the East Asia Tin
Works. She turns to chat for a moment with the girl who works beside
her, and as she turns her head from the window, the room is filled with
a blinding flash. Paralyzed with fear, Toshiko Sasaki is trapped when
the ceiling and people above her fall into her work space. Bookcases fall
forward on her, breaking her leg and crushing her under piles of books.
In a brief moment, these six people, as well as others, survive while
100,000 die; the Atomic Age has begun.
18
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Commentary
Hersey begins his first chapter by introducing four elements that
will provide the drama of his story: the setting, the six survivors, irony,
and suspense. Each of these elements will play a part in the dramatic
unfolding of survival under horrifying conditions.
The city, which is also part of the drama, comes alive in the first
chapter. Hersey describes it as fan-shaped. This traditional Asian image
has a twofold purpose: It provides a symbol well known to Hersey and
to others familiar with Japanese culture, and it also reinforces the culture and beauty that is about to be destroyed in an instant. Hiroshima
lies on six islands formed by seven estuarial rivers. It is a city of rivers,
residences, factories, docks, airports, and inland seas. Its commercial
and residential area is in the city’s center and occupies 4 square miles.
Most of the city’s population lives in this area. The number of citizens
was reduced from 380,000 to 245,000 after people left for safer places.
Around the edges of the city are factories and other homes and in the
south are docks, an airport, and the Inland Sea. Surrounding the other
three sides of this delta is a rim of mountains. On this sleepy and warm
morning in August, the air raid sirens signaled during the night, but
an all-clear blast sounds at 8 a.m. right before the bomb detonates.
Within the confines of this time and place, Hiroshima, Hersey
inserts factual details of the six survivors through each of their narratives. These accounts accomplish a second purpose: The survivors will
be witnesses to both similar and contrasting experiences that will help
Hersey interweave their stories and make them come alive to the
readers. Furthermore, these are not six statistics; they are human beings
caught up in a huge and shocking event and their stories enable readers to understand the human facet of this historical happening.
While their experiences will be influenced by their varied locations,
each of the six survivors explains his or her observation of the blinding
light. Mr. Tanimoto sees a “tremendous flash of light,” like a “sheet of
sun.” Mrs. Nakamura sees everything flashing like a huge white light.
Even though he is facing away from the city, Dr. Fujii sees the flash as
a brilliant yellow light, and Father Kleinsorge sees a terrible flash like a
meteor exploding. Dr. Sasaki observes a “gigantic photographic flash,”
and Miss Sasaki is “paralyzed by fear” from a “blinding light.” Each of
these initial reactions is described matter-of-factly, and each complements the others’ versions. This light is the beginning of a long thread
of events that will unify these six survivors. Although this is a factual
Critical Commentaries: Chapter One
19
account that Hersey gives the reader, some readers may be struck by the
fact that light, which is usually associated with spiritual purity and goodness in traditional Western fiction, is now a destroyer. Seeming to appear
supernatural and god-like, it is overpowering, it destroys, and it alters
the environment.
Each survivor sees the huge flash differently but the significance of
the life-changing event is not yet apparent. From this point on, even
though Hersey tells his story factually, the real drama is actually only
beginning as he follows the lives of these six people as they struggle to
survive against terrible odds.
On this particular morning, Hersey also meticulously describes the
actions and everyday details of the six survivors’ lives on the morning
of the bombing. His account lends credence to the feeling of being there
with the inhabitants of Hiroshima. What time they get up, where they
go, their clothes, what they are doing, and occasionally details of their
past histories indicate that this is a “normal” day like any other. Hersey
gives the reader a slice of each survivor’s life and they represent people
from different social strata and varied backgrounds.
To these factual details Hersey adds more human elements, such as
how each person is feeling and what his or her human cares and concerns
are on this particular day. Hersey wants readers to see that this gigantic
event happened to real human beings and that these individuals are
forever changed on this day. By stopping each story where he does in
this first chapter, Hersey adds to the suspense and desire to read on. For
example, he tells of the tailor’s wife whose love and concern for her
children cause her to stay at home. Their sleep had already been interrupted by a journey in the small hours past midnight. She is relieved this
morning when the all-clear siren is sounded, and she hopes they will sleep
a little longer because they are tired from being awakened earlier. She is
moved to pity for her neighbor who must tear down his beautiful home,
board by board, to help the war effort. Readers are taken back in time to
the death of her husband and to her difficulties as a single mother. When
she and her children are buried in debris in their home, readers want to
find out what happens to these people who have struggled to get through
life.
Dr. Fujii, the prosperous, pleasure-seeking physician, also has
thoughts and concerns. In contrast to Mrs. Nakamura, he lives well and
has a beautiful vista from his home. Life is good. But concern for evacuating his patients and workers makes him decide to cut back on his
20
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
practice. Anxiety about the safety of his wife and children causes him
to be separated from them so they will be safe. While he enjoys the good
things in life, he also seems to be a careful man who has thought about
his future and has planned for it. He, too, is brutally hurled through
the air by the bomb blast. When he regains consciousness, he is being
held aloft between the timbers of his house like crossed chopsticks,
another traditional Asian image that reminds readers of the culture and
Eastern civilization that is about to be destroyed. Although the account
is factual, it is also ironic that these timbers symbolize chopsticks, a tool
for eating and thus nurturing.
Father Kleinsorge and Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, like the others, are
described with human concerns and weaknesses, and both are driven by
duty. This similarity enables Hersey to go from one narrative to the next.
Kleinsorge is suffering from war rationing, and he is not well on the day
of the bombing. Yet despite this, he conducts a mass and reads the Prayers
of Thanksgiving. When the sirens go off, he dons his military uniform
so that he can help people to safety. Kleinsorge scans the skies, concerned
about what part he will need to play. His counterpart, Dr. Sasaki, is also
driven by duty. Though he too is not feeling well because of nightmares,
he makes his daily journey to the city to work in the hospital on this day.
The nightmares concern his past and a time when he was driven by
compassion to help people in his mother’s town even though he did not
yet have his medical license. On this particular morning, he alters his
usual route to work; because of that fortuitous decision, he misses the
center of the bomb strike. He is doubly lucky because his colleague in
the third floor laboratory, which was to be his destination, is dead. After
the explosion, as soon as he realizes what has happened, he automatically gets bandages and begins to help people who are maimed and
bleeding.
Another survivor with a cultural concern for duty is the young clerk,
Miss Toshiko Sasaki. She, like other good daughters, is up early helping
the family because her mother and brother are at a pediatric hospital. At
3 a.m. she is making breakfast, packing lunches, and working hard to
keep the family going in her mother’s absence.
The Reverend Mr. Tanimoto is full of anxiety and worry about this
day. He realizes that only two important cities in Japan—Kyoto and
Hiroshima—have not had major bombing raids, and he is sure their
“turn” will come. Described as a “cautious, thoughtful man,” he has
sent his family to the country because he fears for their safety. On this
day he is tired because he moved a piano yesterday. He has also had
Critical Commentaries: Chapter One
21
several sleepless nights, and combined with a poor diet, these physical
factors are adding up. The concerns of his parish are also weighing heavily on his mind. All of these cares and vicissitudes of life make readers
of all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds see these survivors as average, ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary event.
Throughout the book irony is a common theme beginning with
the “all-clear” siren fifteen minutes before the bombing. Locations
continue that sense of irony because everyone’s lives are filled with
unexpected outcomes.
Except for a snap decision, a sleepless night, or a friend staying over,
each person might have been directly in the path of the bomb. Others
might have been farther away from the blast if they had not made
various decisions. The Reverend Tanimoto, torn between his duty as an
air-raid defense chairman and the concerns of his daughter, happens to
go to Koi the morning of the raid. This places him two miles from the
center of the explosion. He throws himself between two large rocks that
shield him from the debris. Because of her decision to stay in her home,
Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura would have been at the East Parade Ground
on the edge of the city with her children, ages 10, 8, and 5. However,
she and the children are so tired that she makes the decision to stay in
her house, only three-quarters of a mile from the center of the blast.
Locations play a major role in life or death. Fortunately, Dr. Fujii gets
up early to see a friend off at the train station; otherwise he would have
been sleeping in his house when the bomb hit. His home is totally
destroyed, so his decision to go outside on the porch to read resulted in
his flight into the river rather than his death. Father Kleinsorge is in a
building that was braced and “double-braced” by an earlier priest who
was afraid of earthquakes. He survives. Dr. Sasaki actually considered
not going into the city this day because he was too tired from his nightmares; had he stayed thirty miles away at his mother’s home, he would
not have found himself in the middle of this nightmare. He later realizes that if he had taken his later, customary train, he would have been
right in the center of the explosion and would most certainly have died.
And he is doubly lucky because seconds before the bombing, he was
heading for a laboratory in the hospital that was demolished by the blast.
Had he been a little faster, he would not have survived the bombing.
Still another irony is that most mornings, the Hiroshima citizens are
accustomed to an American weather plane routinely flying over the city
during most mornings. They reason that if the Americans were to bomb
22
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
the city, there would be quite a few B-29s, not a lowly single plane.
Obviously, this belief, along with the ironic “all-clear” signal, leads to
still more deaths.
When Chapter One ends, each of the survivors has observed similar
scenes when the bomb explodes, but Hersey expresses their viewpoints
about the bomb on their own personal levels. Each survivor thinks that
this has been a bombing raid like others. Not a single person has any
idea of how massive the casualties are and how different this raid is from
any that came before it. Dr. Fujii does not realize how badly he is hurt;
Reverend Tanimoto believes a bomb has fallen on the nearby house and
he then notices the sky, which seems to be twilight even though it is early
morning. Dr. Sasaki thinks his hospital is the only one bombed. Hersey
clearly delineates the personal recollections of each survivor as he or she
remembers his or her initial reaction. By using these techniques, Hersey
emphasizes what statistics can’t: that the extreme destruction and
conflagration is so unexpected and so shocking that these survivors
remember clearly their first reactions.
He ends the chapter on an ironic note by explaining that Miss Sasaki
is being crushed by books, vehicles of man’s humanity in “the first
moment of the atomic age.” This last comment on the young clerk’s fate
is the only break in Hersey’s restrained pattern of understatement. Unlike
earlier Asian images, Hersey has used a universal symbol that all readers
in all cultures can understand: Mankind’s knowledge—symbolized by
books—has becomes not a tool for improving life but a weapon of
destruction. This is what makes August 6, 1945, a watershed event:
Man’s capacity to use his creativity and intelligence to make the world a
better place has instead been used to produce technology that can destroy
on an unprecedented level.
Glossary
(Here and in the following chapters, difficult words and phrases, as
well as allusions and historical references, are explained.)
Jesuit a member of the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic religious
order for men, founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534.
Wassermann Test a test to diagnose syphilis by determining the
presence of syphilitic antibodies in the blood serum; devised by
August von Wasserman (1866-1925), German bacteriologist.
Critical Commentaries: Chapter One
parsonage
23
the dwelling provided by a church for its minister.
rayon any of various textile fibers synthetically produced and woven
or knitted into fabrics.
estuarial of an estuary, an inlet or arm of the sea; especially the lower
portion or wide mouth of a river, where the salty tide meets the
freshwater current.
sampan a small boat used in China and Japan usually propelled with
a scull from the stern and often having a sail and a small cabin
formed of mats.
prefectural government
rule by various administrative officials.
incendiary causing or designed to cause fires, as certain substances,
bombs, and so on.
piecework work paid for at a fixed rate (piece rate) per piece of work
done; in this case for sewing and mending.
hedonistic
having to do with pleasure.
piling a long, thick piece of wood, metal, or stone used in building;
here the base of the house that extends out over the river.
Society of Jesus
See Jesuit.
xenophobic fear of strangers or foreigners.
terminus either end of a transportation line, or a station or town
located there; terminal.
24
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Chapter Two
“The Fire”
Summary
Right after the explosion, smoke is pushing up through the clouds of
dust, and as the houses burn, large water droplets fall. Although the bomb
caused fires citywide, other fires break out from inflammable wreckage
that falls on peoples’ stoves as well as on live wires. A lot of random
destruction has occurred, and the survivors are having difficulty piecing
together what has happened.
Mr. Tanimoto, the minister, runs “wildly” away from the estate and
performs various acts of mercy. At first he thinks several bombs were
dropped. He runs up a hillock on a private estate where he can get a
panoramic view. What greets Tanimoto’s eyes is unimaginable, and it
causes him to run toward the city, concerned for his wife, baby, home,
church, and parishioners.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Nakamura struggles out of the debris of her house
and attempts to rescue her children. When she finds her children unhurt,
she irrationally puts pants, blouses, shoes, helmets, and overcoats on
them. She illogically drops the “symbol of her livelihood,” her sewing
machine, in a cement tank filled with water in the front yard. Grabbing
a rucksack of emergency items, Mrs. Nakamura, her children, and a
neighbor leave for Asano Park, an evacuation area on a rich estate by the
Kyo River. The only building she sees standing is the Jesuit mission
house. Father Kleinsorge, in his underwear, is leaving the mission house
with a small suitcase.
Father Kleinsorge and the other priests of the mission are assessing
the damage. One priest is taken to a doctor. Meanwhile, Kleinsorge
checks out his room in the mission and then begins digging out people
who are reported hurt and missing. Two of the priests take Father
Schiffer, who is bleeding profusely, to find a hospital. Soon the priests
return. They cannot get to Dr. Fujii’s hospital because it has been
destroyed.
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Two
25
Farther down the street (in the river), Dr. Fujii observes what is
happening and realizes that his hospital is destroyed and that he has
been dazed and disoriented for about twenty minutes. Then he realizes
that the tide will soon be coming in, and when it does his head will be
under water. Fear drives him to free himself and climb up the piling
to the riverbank. After he is free, he feels the heat of the fires and
returns to the coolness of the water. Stolidly, he waits for the fires to die
down.
Dr. Sasaki grabs bandages from the storeroom of the Red Cross
Hospital and helps people. Starting with the closest patients, he eventually prioritizes those who are the worst. Literally 10,000 people are
making their way to the hospital—many are horribly burned, maimed,
vomiting, and dying. He takes the worst wounds first, hoping to keep
people from bleeding to death. After only a few hours, he works
mechanically, going relentlessly from one patient to the next.
The luxury of a hospital is not available to Miss Sasaki back in the
debris of the Tin Works; she is unconscious for three hours before she
begins to hear people. Eventually, Miss Sasaki is dragged out with a
badly broken and cut leg. As the rain comes down, a man carries her to
a lean-to with two other horribly wounded people.
Like Mr. Tanimoto, Father Kleinsorge is trying to help victims.
“Apathetic and dazed,” Kleinsorge realizes that they must leave the area
near the mission house because the fires are coming closer. He attempts,
but fails, to rescue his secretary at the diocese, Mr.Fukai.
Mr. Tanimoto is the only person going into the city. He meets hundreds of people with burned eyebrows, hanging skin, shredded clothing,
and burn patterns on their skin. Some people are vomiting and some
are supporting others; all have their heads bowed and are emotionless.
The compassionate Mr. Tanimoto is praying. He is ashamed of being so
unhurt. Miraculously, he finds his wife and baby; they are okay but
strangely unemotional. Now she is going back to Ushida, and she parts,
bewilderedly, from her husband. Tanimoto goes to the East Parade
Ground where thousands of people are hurt; he grabs a basin from a
house and carries river water to them. Then he climbs into a boat and
goes to Asano Park, where he meets Father Kleinsorge. Mr. Tanimoto
stops to help people from the neighborhood.
26
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Down at the river, Dr. Fujii stays in the water and moves upstream
with his two nurses. He is ashamed of his appearance. In the afternoon,
he sets off with the nurses for his parent’s home. In Ushida, Fujii finds
first aid articles at a relative’s house. He bandages the nurses and then
they bandage him.
At Asano Park, Mrs. Nakamura is sitting in the green, quiet place of
refuge and watching hundreds of people pour in. She and her children
are thirsty, so they drink from the river. They start vomiting. Silent and
horrified by the ghastly wounds, Father Kleinsorge does what he can
to help. No one weeps, screams, complains, or talks. Meanwhile, Mr.
Tanimoto finds a boat and ferries ten or twelve people at a time throughout the afternoon because the fires are spreading toward the park.
The two ministers get people together to put out fires with clothes,
buckets, and basins. Although it takes two hours, they succeed. The
raindrops increase and a whirlwind tears through the park, destroying
trees in its path. After the storm, Mr. Tanimoto again ferries people,
and Father Kleinsorge makes arrangements to send a cart to pick up
Mrs. Nakamura and her children the next day so that they can join the
priests in Nagatsuka.
Commentary
Hersey continues his objective, journalistic style in Chapter Two.
Throughout this day, Hersey shows the results of the atomic bomb on
the people, living and dead, in the city of Hiroshima. The devastation
does not stop after the bomb explodes; it goes on relentlessly in the form
of fires, whirlwinds, and unnatural acts of nature. Surviving the initial
bombing is not the end, but rather the beginning of more horror.
Hersey unflinchingly presents the pictures of destruction and death and
allows his six survivors to tell the story through their own eyes. The
sweeping catastrophe of the bombing is impossible for the mind to take
in; on the other hand, the suffering of six individuals in the wake of the
devastation can be grasped somewhat. Their survival, along with their
desire to find safety and help others, seems to be a result of both fate
and volition.
Hersey steps in intermittently during this chapter to add some
factual explanations of what the survivors cannot know. He uses the
actual description of the bomb to show that it has completely altered
the atmospheric environment and nature itself, emphasizing the devastation that has occurred. He also explains technical aspects of the
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Two
27
bomb’s fallout and gives the reader a broader picture of the lack of medical assistance in the city, which of course leads to more death. He
explains the fires, dust, smoke, houses burning, abnormal water droplets,
and other phenomena resulting from the bomb. The abnormal water
droplets, for example, are actually condensed moisture from the dust,
heat, and fission fragments already in the upper atmosphere. These are
pieces of the puzzle that the survivors do not know.
Then Hersey turns his attention to deaths due to lack of medical
assistance. Dr. Sasaki is only one of six doctors (out of 30) at the Red
Cross Hospital still able to function. There are only 10 nurses, out of a
staff of over 200, able to work. What Dr. Sasaki cannot know is that
10,000 people are making their way to the hospital looking for help
from him and the other five doctors; perhaps it is a blessing that he does
not know this crushing fact. Only Hersey can tell us these statistics,
because the six survivors are caught up in their individual struggles for
existence and are not privy to this broader perspective. Even if they
knew these facts, they would be able to do little about the hopelessness
of their situation.
The author skillfully presents the individual narratives of the survivors,
using only the events that they would personally know. Their viewpoints,
once again, underscore their lack of help and their confusion. Hersey is
able to show the confusion of each person who sees only one small piece
of the puzzle. Used to conventional bombing, they have no idea of the
total destruction beyond their limited viewpoint. Mr. Tanimoto, for
instance, thinks at first that several bombs have fallen. He sees the
panorama of destruction from the hill, and it is so overwhelming that he
cannot comprehend what has happened. Later, his shocked description
of people leaving the city while he looks for his family is sobering. They
are silent, heads bowed, without expression, and in shock. Mrs.
Nakamura sees not the vast panorama but a small part of the city. She
notices what the street is like: no buildings are standing except for the
mission, and people are calling out for help but she cannot help them.
Father Kleinsorge is likewise confused by the vast destruction. He is perplexed by the damage done to his room in the mission. So much random
destruction and in so little time! Miss Sasaki’s viewpoint is totally limited
because she is alone and hurt. Each character questions the irrational
rationally: Both Dr. Fujii and Dr. Saski are overwhelmed by the destruction and their inability to help huge numbers of the injured. Hersey
presents the limited viewpoints of each of the six survivors as they
struggle to understand what is going on in their small corner of the city.
28
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Total confusion and disbelief reign in the city. Speculations and rumors
continue as people attempt to understand. When Mrs. Nakamura and
her children get sick from drinking out of the river, the survivors hear
that the Americans dropped a gas that is making everyone sick. When
the abnormal drops of rain fall, the people believe that Americans are
dropping gasoline on them that they will set on fire. Hersey adds these
details to show the fear and terror of the survivors and their attempts
to explain what they are seeing and feeling. It is mass chaos and total
disorganization.
Throughout the chapter, the specter of overwhelming death dominates, and many of the people described cannot take in the vast human
destruction. They are numbed by what they see; emotions become cold
and detached. Mr. Tanimoto risks his life to find his wife and baby, but
when he finds them he unemotionally says, “Oh, you are safe.” Then
he goes about his business of helping others, while his wife is left to
struggle back to Ushida with their baby. The vast destruction also affects
Father Kleinsorge who is “apathetic and dazed.” When he reaches Asano
Park, what he sees sickens him. The gruesome wounds, especially the
burn victims, are so horrifying that at first he is afraid. Here Hersey
seems to emphasize the grotesque nature of the wounded and the
horrified reactions of those such as Kleinsorge who are trying to help.
Many of the sights Kleinsorge describes are so far beyond reality that
they seem like surrealistic nightmares—eyes melted into faces, skin
falling off in large pieces, and disfiguring burns. But the German priest
eventually does what he can to help; the victims are silent and no one
weeps, screams, complains, or talks. All the survivors are desensitized
to what appears to be a scene from hell.
Another common reaction amidst the confusion and helplessness is
the attempt to help others. Throughout all of this shock, trauma, and
overwhelming death, people commit acts of mercy and concern for
those they love. All of the six survivors, except Miss Sasaki, who is alone,
try to help others.
Many of the accounts of merciful acts are attempts on Hersey’s part
to show how individual survivors reacted to the overwhelming needs
of others. These accounts also illustrate the characters of the men he
is describing. Mr. Tanimoto and Father Kleinsorge are certainly heroes
of the Asano Park refugees. Their lives have been spent helping others
and they do what seems to be natural to their sense of kindness. Each
helps as many survivors as he can, but the number of injured people
is overwhelming.
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Two
29
Dr. Fujii, on his way to get first aid supplies, helps both of the nurses
who work for him; he also helps numerous others. Dr. Sasaki works
relentlessly, 19 hours at a time. No effort is enough. It almost seems as
though Hersey focuses his lens on individual acts of mercy and then
later broadens the focus to the city as a whole.
Glossary
solicitous showing care, attention, or concern.
panorama a picture unrolled before the spectator in such a way as
to give the impression of a continuous view.
fission fragments fragments resulting from the splitting of an atom’s
nucleus.
papier-mache suitcase a carrying case made of a hardened mixture
of paper pulp, glue, and so on.
breviary a book containing the Psalms, readings, prayers, and so on
of the Divine Office.
Molotov flower basket (also bread basket) Japanese name for a selfscattering cluster of bombs.
extricated set free; release or disentangle (from a net, difficulty, and
so on).
incapacitated
unable to engage in normal activity; disable.
Mercurochrome trademark for a red liquid solution used as a mild
antiseptic and germicide.
abrasions and lacerations
scrapes and jagged tears or wounds.
porte-cochere a kind of porch roof projecting over a driveway at
an entrance, as of a house.
Shinto shrine a religious building of the principal religion of Japan,
with emphasis upon the worship of nature, ancestors, ancient
heroes, and the divinity of the emperor. Prior to 1945, Shinto was
the state religion.
brackish
having an unpleasant taste; nauseating.
corrugated iron iron sheet formed into a wavy pattern of parallel
grooves and ridges.
30
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
grotesque characterized by distortions or striking incongruities in
appearance, shape, or manner; fantastic, bizarre.
atavistic displaying characteristics of remote ancestors.
ionization the process by which something becomes electrically
charged, as a gas under the influence of radiation or electric discharge; here, the smell from such a process.
prostrate lying flat, prone, or supine; in a state of physical exhaustion or weakness.
Occidental a person born in the West or a member of Western culture. Here, Father Kleinsorge is German rather than Japanese.
Grummans military aircrafts made by the American firm Grumman
Aircraft Corporation.
vortex a whirling mass of water forming a vacuum at its center into
which anything caught in the motion is drawn; whirlpool.
razed
to tear down completely; level to the ground, demolish.
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Three
31
Chapter Three
“Details Are Being Investigated”
Summary
It is the evening of August 6. After 12 hours of post-bomb suffering, a Japanese naval launch moves slowly down the seven rivers of
Hiroshima, stopping at strategic spots. A young naval officer in a neat
uniform announces that there is hope and that the people should be
patient because help—a naval hospital ship—is coming. The survivors
breathe easier knowing help is on the way.
Father Kleinsorge and Mr. Tanimoto join forces to evacuate the priests
from Asano Park to the Novitiate in the hills. Responding to Kleinsorge’s
call for help, six priests return carrying litters for the two injured priests
to the Novitiate. The priests enlist Mr. Tanimoto to take them by boat
upstream to a clear road. Father Kleinsorge also requests that the priests
send back a handcart for Mrs. Nakamura and her children.
Meanwhile, Mr. Tanimoto rescues two groups of people. Their
wounds are ghastly and “suppurated and smelly.” The minister must
remind himself “these are human beings.” Horrified, he must sit down
to get his bearings. He makes three trips upstream in his boat with weakened survivors and he also rescues two young girls who have horrible,
raw burns. They have been up to their necks in salt water, so the pain
must be excruciating; the younger girl, who is in shock, dies.
The suffering continues. Dr. Fujii and Miss Sasaki are each alone
and in great pain. In the Red Cross Hospital, a worn-out Dr. Sasaki
“moves aimlessly.” Blood, vomit, dust, and plaster are everywhere, and
there is no one to carry out the dead. At 3 p.m., he has worked 19 hours
straight and cannot dress another wound.
In sharp contrast to the people’s suffering and understanding of what
has happened comes a message over Japanese radio stating that Hiroshima
has been attacked by B-29s. A new kind of bomb is believed to have been
used and the “details are being investigated.” No one in Hiroshima hears
the broadcast by the American president saying that it was an atomic
bomb that hit Hiroshima, more powerful than 20,000 tons of TNT.
32
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Suffering and lack of help are the basic themes of this chapter. Mr.
Tanimoto finds a doctor who explains that the badly wounded will die.
As the doctor puts it, “We can’t bother with them.” At about the same
time, looking for fresh water, Father Kleinsorge finds along the way
twenty men with completely burned faces, hollow eye sockets, and
cheeks streaked with fluid from their melted eyes. Their injuries indicate they were facing upward at the time of the bombing. Their mouths
are mere wounds, swollen and covered with pus. Father Kleinsorge
forms a straw from a grass blade to give them water.
Despite his numbness from the sight of such pain and suffering,
Father Kleinsorge demonstrates acts of kindness and almost cries when
such actions are proffered to him. Father Kleinsorge meets two children
who are separated from their mother and questions them. Their family
name is Kataoka. He asks the Novitiate to send a cart for the children.
Feeling weak, he talks with a woman who hands him a tealeaf to chew
so that he will not feel so thirsty. Her gentleness makes him want to
cry. Earlier Father Kleinsorge arranged for a handcart to take Mrs.
Nakamura and her children to the Novitiate. The cart arrives and the
Nakamuras leave for safety. Later Mrs. Nakamura finds out that her
entire family has been killed. As he leaves for the Novitiate on foot, Father
Kleinsorge sees the massive destruction all around the city. He reaches
the Novitiate. Sick and exhausted, he goes to bed.
Miss Sasaki watches men haul corpses out of the factory and waits
for help. Her leg is swollen, putrid, and discolored, and she has had no
food or water for two days and nights. On the third day, friends come
looking for her body and find her alive. Later, men put her in a truck
and take her to a relief station where there are army doctors. After
discussing amputation, the doctors decide against it. Miss Sasaki is sent
to a military hospital where they keep her because she develops a high
temperature.
People are both entering and leaving the city. Father Cieslik goes
to the city looking for Mr. Fukai, the secretary of the diocese, but he
cannot find him. That evening, the theological student who was Fukai’s
roommate says that Mr. Fukai had told him a short time before the
bombing that Japan was dying and that he wanted to die with her.
Evidently he has received his wish. Dr. Sasaki works three straight days
with only one hour’s sleep. He worries again that his mother will think
him dead. He gets leave to go to her home where he ends up sleeping
for 17 hours.
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Three
33
Official news finally breaks, but the survivors are too busy to listen.
It is now August 9, and at 11:02 a.m. an atomic bomb is dropped on
Nagasaki. As this news breaks, Mr. Tanimoto is in the park helping
victims. He takes a tent from his home to help shield survivors. His
former neighbor, Mrs. Kamai, still holds her dead baby and seems to
be watching Mr. Tanimoto. He suggests that she cremate the baby, but
she simply holds on tighter and continues to watch him.
Order is slowly being restored, and the situation of each survivor is
revisited. The Novitiate is doing its part by taking in fifty refugees, including Mrs. Nakamura and her children, who are still vomiting every time
they eat. At the Red Cross Hospital, Dr. Sasaki is discovering that things
are finally becoming routine. Corpses are identified and burned on pyres.
The Japanese feel that they have a moral responsibility to cremate and
enshrine the dead; in this situation, even their grave obligation to the dead
is in jeopardy. The Kataoka children, whom Father Kleinsorge befriended
in the park, are reunited with their mother on Goto Island, off Nagasaki.
The compassion and forgiveness of the Reverend Tanimoto is particularly evident when he goes to the bedside of a man who had wronged
him. The military hospital is getting a large number of soldiers, so they
evacuate civilians, including Miss Sasaki. She is placed on a ship and lies
in the sun all day despite her fever. Eventually, she goes to see a fracture
specialist from Kobe.
On August 15, Emperor Tenno gives a radio address, telling his
people the war is over.
Commentary
Chapter Three begins in late afternoon on August 6 and ends on
August 15, officially known as V-J Day or “Victory over Japan Day.”
There is irony in the title of the chapter, “Details Are Being Investigated.” The grim fact is that the helpless survivors have no access to nor
do they have time to think about official information, and their lives
are a living hell of pain and suffering. The irony continues when we
realize that “the details being investigated” have nothing to do with the
survivors. No government is making any effort to help the survivors or
understand what they have been through. It is the devastation and not
the victims that are being investigated. The Japanese government is
checking out the amount of damage and the scientific community is
considering what kind of bomb this could have been. The government
releases carefully censored news, but the ordinary citizen has no use for
34
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
it. Throughout the chapter, there are official announcements by both
the Japanese and American governments. And while those words go out
over the airwaves, only hopelessness and catastrophic suffering dominate in Hiroshima. It is an uphill battle for those who are dying, those
who are helping the wounded, and those who are alone. People are
discovering that their family members are dead or they are being
reunited with family members thought to be missing. And, over all these
days, the few people who have a moment to think are trying to make
sense out of death on such a vast scale.
Like omniscient stage managers dispensing factual tidbits, the Japanese and American governments come into this chapter in selected spots.
The Japanese naval ship that promises hope never delivers. The reader
senses that there will be no help. While the Japanese people look toward
their government for relief—medical supplies, doctors, nurses, food,
water—the reader realizes that the naval boat, though promising help,
is simply assessing the overwhelming needs. Again, Hersey seems to be
pushing the investigation of the damage to the forefront. The naval ship
is checking on the extent of the bombing and forming theories about
the cause. Rumors and theories abound concerning this strange bombing. The nature of the bombing raid is speculated upon by Japanese radio
and finally announced by American shortwave broadcast. The “atomic”
bomb’s vastness cannot even be understood by the human mind, but its
results are being felt throughout this city. Hersey uses these faceless
announcements to emphasize the impersonal, scientific, and political
nature of the bomb, juxtaposed against the total confusion and lack of
organized help for the people’s suffering.
The “helpers” are but a drop in a huge river. Even though Mr.
Tanimoto evacuates a number of people who are horribly burned and
dying, he cannot stay and help all of them. As he transfers the priests
upstream, many people call out to him. He comes back to help the
dying because they are too weak to move away from the edge of the
river and they will drown with the incoming tide if they are not moved.
Eventually, Tanimoto must carry each one to the boat, take them up
river, and deposit them on higher ground. Ironically, many are ferried
to their deaths on the sandpit anyway.
Western readers may be reminded here of the ferryman carrying
souls across the River Styx. The images of death and the multitudes of
people dying with their arms reaching out for Tanimoto and the bodies all intertwined may also evoke in the Western reader the images in
hell of Dante’s Inferno, as the dead and the dying are so numerous that
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Three
35
Tanimoto’s job is impossible. Tanimoto is sickened as he takes one
woman’s hand and her skin slips off in “huge, glove-like pieces.” The
picture is so grotesque that he questions his sanity. He must sit down
to get his bearings. When he rescues the two young girls who have been
up to their neck in salt water, he leaves them with Father Kleinsorge,
where the younger one dies of shock. For every individual who is saved
another 10, 50, 100, or 1,000 die. Father Kleinsorge also finds himself
fighting against great odds. He goes for fresh water outside the entrance
of the park. The army doctor he sees has only iodine with which to help
people.
This helplessness is further illustrated by Dr. Sasaki’s battle at the
Red Cross Hospital. Eventually more help arrives, but again it is just a
minor melody in a symphony of pain and suffering. The frustration of
these three is vented in Mr. Tanimoto’s realization of his “blind, murderous rage.” How can the government let such a thing happen? Where
is the help?
As order begins to be restored, reuniting families and making sense
out of what has happened are the new tasks. Fathers Schiffer, LaSalle,
and Kleinsorge are at the Novitiate and have had their wounds dressed.
They are getting some rest. At the park, Father Kleinsorge befriended
the Kataoka children (ages 13 and 5). Now they are reunited with their
parents. But far more often the survivors find out that they are alone.
Mrs. Nakamura’s whole family is gone except for her children. A relative, Mrs. Osaki, comes to see Mrs. Nakamura on August 10 and
explains that her son died when the factory he worked in burned. Toshio
Nakamura has nightmares about the fire because Mrs. Osaki’s son was
his friend.
Some are left alone in silence, and others search for answers. It
appears that Mrs. Sasaki has no one left. Dr. Fujii’s niece and Mr. Fukai,
who wanted to die with Japan, will never be seen again. Mr. Tanimoto
tries to make sense of his blind rage that came from so much death and
destruction. He returns to his parsonage and digs through the rubbish
looking for his old life. Mr. Tanaka, a man who had spread rumors of
Mr. Tanimoto being a spy for the Americans, is dying. He sends for the
minister. Even though Mr. Tanimoto hates him and thinks he is selfish
and cruel, he goes to the bedside of Mr. Tanaka and reads a Psalm over
him as he dies. His words of Scripture over Mr. Tanaka afford the minister a bit of grace, but still there are no answers.
36
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Hersey begins a pattern concerning Mr. Tanimoto in this chapter
that seems to continue throughout the book. In Asano Park he is a
ferryman between life and death, who tries to save as many as he can.
Here, in reading the Scripture over Mr. Tanaka, he seems to be a bridge
between the dying man and God. This image of Tanimoto standing
in between two opposites will be repeated again later when he attempts
to be a liaison between the survivors and the government agencies that
can help them. And finally, he is certainly the interpreter of the
message from the Emperor over the radio and the reaction of the
people. Mr. Tanimoto always seems to be a go-between of sorts
between each group.
Father Kleinsorge, too, walks through the city and looks through
the debris of the mission house amazed at the destruction.
Hersey uses several of the survivors to explain the continuous search
for answers. In the basement vault where the hospital keeps its X-rays,
someone discovers that the X-rays have all been exposed, leading to
more speculation and questions about the strange bomb. Dr. Fujii
listens to rumors of magnesium dust and speculates on what has
happened. Just as the government provided no help, it also provides
no answers. Each survivor struggles on his or her own to figure out
what has happened, and Hersey seems to emphasize their perplexity.
So far, for the survivors in Hiroshima, there are no answers. No answers
are available and the government is silent. No answers, no help.
Throughout this chapter, Hersey contrasts the government’s broad
pronouncements and the survivors’ total lack of understanding. Around
August 12, there is a rumor, vague at first, that the bomb that destroyed
the city was made by the energy produced when atoms split. The
Japanese call it an “original child bomb,” and the newspapers make
cautious statements about it. Although the average man on the street
has trouble understanding this, the Japanese physicists who come into
the city to measure various aspects of the destruction understand it well.
Readers see that the “atomic age” has spawned a whole new power
that can be tripped by a switch in a moment. If Hersey had not included
these details, the political and scientific nature of the entire event would
have been ignored. The survivors, in contrast, bear the suffering caused
by this new scientific knowledge but are removed from it and are
ignorant of its power. Their government, whose policies and refusal to
surrender have resulted in this event, cannot protect its people or
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Three
37
provide services to help their suffering. This government’s silence to its
people in this catastrophe reveals its own inability to respond amidst
confusion and chaos.
Yet another government symbol is brought in at the end of the
chapter—the Emperor Hirohito. Hersey effectively uses Mr. Tanimoto
as an interpreter between the government and the suffering people.
Emperor Tenno (Hirohito) addresses his people for the first time on
the radio on August 15. Hersey uses Tanimoto’s later account to
describe how the people are awed by the voice of their emperor speaking to them, the common people. But the people Tanimoto describes
are bound in bandages, helped to stand and walk, and leaning on sticks
to support their injured limbs.
Perhaps Mr. Tanimoto sees yet another irony — the honor and
emotional pride of a people when they consider their ruler and government contrasted with their physical and emotional suffering at the
hands of that same government that has refused to surrender despite
the cost to its people.
Glossary
succor to give assistance to in time of need or distress; help, aid,
relief.
staves plural of staff; sticks, rods, or poles; here, used as a support
in walking.
clavicle the bone that connects the scapula with the sternum;
collarbone.
contusions
bruises; injuries in which the skin is not broken.
charnel-house
deposited.
a building or place where corpses or bones are
diversion anything that diverts or distracts the attention; specifically, a pastime or amusement.
gas gangrene a gangrene caused by a microorganism that produces
gas within the tissue of wounds, causing severe pain and swelling.
credence belief, especially in the reports or testimony of another.
38
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Lauritsen electroscope an instrument for detecting very small
charges of electricity, electric fields, or radiation.
Neher electrometer a device for detecting or measuring differences
of electrical potential.
moribund
dying.
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Four
39
Chapter Four
“Panic Grass and Feverfew”
Summary
Chapter Four begins on August 18 and relates events up to a year after
the bombing. Once physicists determine that the radiation level is safe
for people to return to Hiroshima, the six survivors come back but each
is suffering from radiation sickness. Father Kleinsorge connects with two
of the other survivors as a result of the effects of the bombing. He suffers
from feeling faint and tired and his wounds won’t heal. He is sent to the
Catholic International Hospital in Tokyo where he becomes somewhat
of a celebrity. Leaving the hospital on December 19 for Hiroshima, Father
Kleinsorge meets Dr. Fujii on the train. When Father Kleinsorge explains
that he must rest each day, Dr. Fujii predicts that rest will be difficult with
so much rebuilding going on. Kleinsorge visits Miss Sasaki in the hospital at the request of her doctor; she is depressed over her crippled leg and
she is not getting better. His faith and religious discussions slowly result
in her eventual healing and converting to Catholicism. A year after the
bombing, Kleinsorge is ill enough to be back in the hospital. Dr. Sasaki
gets married in March, but he never again regains the kind of energy he
had before the bombing. He observes and theorizes about the radiation
sickness and works on ways to treat it. Along with fellow doctors, Dr.
Sasaki analyzes the three stages of radiation illness and how to treat each.
Meanwhile, his fellow doctor, Dr. Fujii, is living in a home that eventually washes into the sea after being hit by a typhoon. He buys a vacant
clinic in Kaitaichi, east of Hiroshima, where he practices medicine again
and socializes with the occupation officers. His thriving practice from the
old days is gone.
Mr. Tanimoto suffers from a general malaise, a fever, and weakness.
He can ill afford to rebuild his church. Even if he had the financial
resources, his health is too poor to do any physical work. He continues
to preach in his home. Mrs. Nakamura has regained the hair she lost,
but she is living desperately, trying to feed her family and keep a roof
over their heads. She has no money to pay a doctor to treat her own illness, let alone the illnesses of her children. Father Kleinsorge advises
her to find work as a seamstress or domestic; she settles on the former.
40
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Father Kleinsorge and a fellow priest obtain living quarters first in a
shack and then in a barracks sold to them by the city. They hire a contractor to build a new mission house. Against his doctor’s orders, Father
Kleinsorge does not rest but instead visits possible new church members.
A year after the bombing he goes back to the hospital in Tokyo for a rest.
The new municipal government, under the direction of the Allied
Military Government, plans projects to rebuild the city, including the
restoration of electricity and water as well as the construction of small
housing units. Meanwhile, the statisticians begin to calculate the damage to lives and buildings, and the scientists converge on Hiroshima to
measure the force and heat of the bomb in various locations.
The chapter ends with a summary of each character’s current conditions. Speculation about the bomb’s aftermath in theoretical and philosophical terms is joined by opinions from the medical and religious
professions regarding the ethical justifications for the bombing. However, the people of Hiroshima (those that Hersey writes about) do not
think about the ethical implications at all but rather about resignation—
what is done is done.
The children of Hiroshima still see the day of the bombing as a great
adventure. Months later their descriptions are factual details of the
destruction and the dead.
Commentary
Hersey names the fourth chapter “Panic Grass and Feverfew” after
the names of weeds growing in Hiroshima. Feverfew literally means, “to
drive away the fever.” Because this chapter describes the radiation sickness and the result of the bomb’s intense heat damage, perhaps Hersey
chose this title to show the desire of the city’s survivors to drive away the
intense heat and the fever associated with their radiation sickness.
The city of Hiroshima is described in bits and pieces: first by the
personal thoughts of the survivors and then by the more objective
statisticians. Father Kleinsorge is becoming accustomed to the four
square miles of “reddish brown scar” that is Hiroshima. Hersey provides imagery here that evokes from the reader an understanding of
the swiftness of death. He describes signs with inquiries from family
members about surviving relatives that have been crudely erected on
ash piles. The macabre succession of stationary cars and bicycles on
the street is a vivid image reminding the reader that in the midst of
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Four
41
life, people simply vanished. Miss Sasaki, being transferred from one
place to another, is “horrified and amazed” by the city she knew so
well. The government must deal on a practical level with the lack of
electricity and clean water and begin making decisions about how to
house and feed the survivors. A Planning Conference is called to figure out what to do with the debris that was Hiroshima and decisions
must be made about what to place over this burnt piece of earth. All
life as the people of Hiroshima have known it has changed forever.
Because Hersey uses his factual, journalistic style, the reader is simply shown the effects of the bombing on the six survivors. Hersey
produces a profound reaction in the reader because he does not
sensationalize or dramatize.
The largest portion of the chapter gives an account of the horrifying effects of radiation sickness. Father Kleinsorge and Miss Sasaki have
wounds that won’t heal; Mrs. Nakamura and her children have lost their
hair and suffer from diarrhea; Reverend Tanimoto, Father Kleinsorge,
and Dr. Sasaki suffer from weakness and a loss of energy. Miss Sasaki
has a deep depression that is keeping her from healing. The lack of medical supplies, doctors, and nurses, and the medical inexperience with
radiation sickness also contribute to the problem. But the survivors
struggle on. They try to rebuild homes and churches, try to feed and
clothe children, and attempt to come to some sort of closure with what
has happened.
Hersey continues to depersonalize the aftermath of the bombing
and radiation sickness. Nowhere is there an image or literary phrase that
can be correlated to the six human stories. Dr. Sasaki and his fellow
physicians theorize that radiation survivors have three stages to their
illness. The doctors quantify in percentages how many bodies—in what
location after so many days—died, suffered immediate symptoms,
or had lasting radiation effects. Meanwhile, Father Kleinsorge is pale,
shaky, seriously anemic, and has abdominal pains and a temperature of
104 degrees. If the reader listens to the experts, Kleinsorge appears to
be simply a minor number in a medical project providing opportunities around which the medical profession can theorize.
Hersey seems to be layering page after page of quantitative terms
and numerical equivalents to explain how the governmental institutions
of the time treated the survivors and the city as a huge experiment in
new technology. He describes the assault of the medical establishment
and statisticians upon the city. Evidently, history must know what
42
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
percentage of people were injured, survived, had after-effects, died,
and so on within what radius. How many buildings were destroyed or
useable? Even the force and heat of the bomb’s detonation is checked
to determine accurate and measurable statistics for the future. In opposition to the facts and figures, percentages and graphs, six survivors’ lives
symbolize the individual suffering caused but rarely really measured by
the bombing.
Hersey allows the reader, near the end of Chapter 4, to speculate
about the ethical question of whether the bomb should have been
dropped. He presents three viewpoints, leaving the reader once again
to draw his or her conclusions. Several spokespeople present the position that a community spirit and traditional attitude of dying with
honor for the Emperor are positive results of the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima. In contrast, many of Hiroshima’s citizens hate Americans
and feel they should be tried as war criminals and hanged. Hersey’s
third viewpoint is that of the Jesuit priests who are not Japanese. They
seem to justify the bomb as a death weapon—like poison gas—and
explain that the Japanese government was warned and so their people
suffer.
Hersey leaves little doubt in the reader’s mind that this entire chapter has consistently woven a theme of how impersonally war stamps
its mark on the lives of those who survive as well as on the unnamed
statistics of those who die. Against all of these ethical arguments, he
presents what went on in the minds of the children of Hiroshima. They
will forever be left with a traumatized reaction to this pivotal event in
their lives. In the same breath as a mundane description of their day,
they mention two mothers, one wounded and one dead, as well as
familiar neighbors who are walking around covered with blood. Life
goes on.
As always, throughout this chapter, Hersey leaves the reader with the
question of whether war is ever justifiable, even in a so-called “just” cause.
Ask the six survivors: Miss Sasaki, suffering deep depression and now
crippled for life; Mrs. Nakamura, who is left extremely poor and must
somehow nurture her children; Father Kleinsorge, who is hospitalized
again a year after the bombing; Dr. Sasaki, who can no longer find the
energy he once had to care for his patients; Dr. Fujii, who has no prospects
for rebuilding his thriving practice; and the Reverend Tanimoto, who no
longer has a church and is suffering from malaise.
John Hersey writes that these are “the lucky ones.”
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Four
43
Glossary
talismanic
yen
thought of as having magical power.
the basic monetary unit of Japan.
capricious changing abruptly and without apparent reason; erratic,
flighty.
radiation sickness nausea, diarrhea, bleeding, loss of hair, and so
on caused by overexposure to radiation.
Maupassant (Henri René Albert) Guy de
of novels and short stories.
1850-93; French writer
bluets a small plant of the madder family, having small, pale-blue,
four-lobed flowers.
Spanish bayonets
yuccas having stiff, sword-shaped leaves.
goosefoot a weedy plant with small green flowers and fleshy foliage.
purslane a weed with pink, fleshy stems and small, yellow, shortlived flowers.
panic grass any of several grasses of the genus Panicum, such as millet, used as fodder.
feverfew a bush with finely divided foliage and flowers with white
florets around a yellow disk.
sickle senna any of the caesalpinia family of plants, with finely
divided leaves and yellow flowers.
regeneration
part.
Biol. the renewal or replacement of any hurt or lost
emanations heavy, gaseous isotopes that result from the decay of a
radioactive element.
cyclotron a device for accelerating charged nuclear particles through
a magnetic field in a widening spiral path; particle accelerator.
triangulating a method of determining the distance between two
points on the earth’s surface by plotting on a chart a series of connected triangles, measuring a base line between two points, and
locating a third point by computing both the size of the angles
made by lines from this point to the ends of the base line and the
lengths of these lines.
44
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
white count the number of white blood cells, which are important
in the body’s defenses against infection.
moxibustion the burning of moxa (a soft, downy material) on the
skin as a cauterizing agent or counterirritant, especially in traditional Chinese and Japanese medicine.
unprecedented having no precedent or parallel; unheard-of; novel.
succumbed died.
crux
the essential or deciding point.
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Five
45
Chapter Five
“The Aftermath”
Summary
In the years from 1946 to 1985, the six survivors’ lives went in
several directions. After 1945, the Japanese began to use the word
hibakusha, meaning “explosion affected persons” to describe the bomb
survivors. Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, often sick from radiation illness,
struggled to keep her family alive, sheltered, and fed for many years
before the government began to help. Through a series of fortunate
events, her life got better. She was able to rent a house for $1 per month
and was eventually hired at a chemical company by a compassionate
owner who did not discriminate against hibakusha. After working at
the chemical company for 13 years, Mrs. Nakamura was able to retire,
to see her son become employed, and to see her daughters marry and
move away. Forty years after the bombing, she still suffered from the
effects of radiation, but she had also learned to take care of herself. She
avoided any political displays that were related to the bombing.
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was haunted for the rest of his life by memories of August 6, 1945. He finished his doctoral degree and married well
and because his family was wealthy he could afford to start a medical
practice where, for five years, he mainly removed keloid scars from
hibakusha. Being ambitious, he eventually left the hospital and opened
a private clinic in Makaihara, putting Hiroshima behind him. But a
series of tragedies marked the rest of his life. Diagnosed with lung cancer, he underwent surgery to remove his left lung. Then, in 1972, his
wife died of breast cancer and he threw himself into his work and built
a larger geriatric clinic. He had now distanced himself from Hiroshima.
But occasionally he would treat a hibakusha and then be reminded of
the “nameless souls” that went to mass graves outside the Red Cross
Hospital in 1945.
Father Kleinsorge’s whole life, from 1946 until his death, was filled
with sacrifice and good works. He loved all things Japanese. He often
wore Japanese clothes. He became a naturalized citizen whose new name
was Father Makoto Takakura. Eventually he retired to a tiny church in
Mukaihara, and the last ten years of his life were filled with illness. In
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
l976, he slipped and fell, fracturing his back and becoming bedridden.
On November 19, 1977, he died and was buried in a pine grove on a
hill above the Novitiate.
After she was released from the hospital, Toshiko Sasaki lived with
her younger siblings, Yasuo and Yaeko—who turned out to be alive —
in a suburb in Koi. With no fiancé, she found comfort in Father Kleinsorge’s words, and she was baptized a Catholic. Needing to support her
brother and sister, she got a job working in an orphanage where she
enrolled her siblings.
After the bombing, Miss Sasaki had a series of operations. She struggled to keep her family going. When she was able to consider her own
needs, she studied to become a nun. Despite the difficulty of her studies, she realized that the tenacity and fortitude she showed after the
bombing held her in good stead. She took her vows in 1957 and became
Sister Dominique Sasaki.
During all this time, she had grave illnesses from the radiation
poisoning. She also discovered that her greatest gift was to help people
die peacefully. In 1980, she was honored for her years in the church,
and she made a speech in which she stated that after the bombing, she
realized that her life had been spared, but she desired to move forward
rather than dwell on the past.
Dr. Masakazu Fujii enjoyed the good life more than the other
survivors. He suffered few ill effects from the radiation. Fujii built a
clinic in Hiroshima in 1948—a modest structure in comparison with
his earlier hospital—and he raised a family of five children. His life was
filled with pleasure. He loved the gaudy entertainment district of
Hiroshima, and he was getting a reputation as a playboy.
His remaining life had tremendous highs and lows. When money
was raised for plastic surgery for a group of Hiroshima girls who were
scarred extensively from the bombing, he went along on their trip to
New York as an interpreter, a chaperone, and a social director. He spent
time in New York City and enjoyed the company of the doctors of
Mount Sinai Hospital. It was a wonderful life. However, 1963 found
him back in Japan, where he was melancholy and depressed, and
estranged from his wife. He built a new American-style home that was
ostentatious and glamorous. But on New Year’s Eve, he was found
unconscious from a gas heater in his house. It was unclear whether it
was the result of an accident or attempted suicide. For 11 years, he was
hardly conscious. When he died, the autopsy revealed liver cancer.
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Five
47
The Reverend Tanimoto’s life was connected throughout, in one way
or another, with politics, the peace movement, and fund-raisers for the
hibakusha.
Tanimoto connected with several influential people in America,
including author Pearl Buck and the editor of The Saturday Review of
Literature, Norman Cousins. With their help, he made three U.S. tours
to raise money for the hibakusha. However, Tanimoto was increasingly
left out of the Japanese peace movement; and like Mrs. Nakamura,
he stayed away from political celebrations of the bombing. In 1982,
Mr. Tanimoto retired. It seemed that forty years after the bombing, his
memories of that day were not as clear as they had been earlier in his
life. The world’s memory of that day was fading as well.
Commentary
The usual and customary way for an author to end a book is to pull
together the themes of his story and explain their significance. Hersey
never does that. As with his earlier chapters, Hersey remains true to a strict
accounting of the factual lives of the six survivors during the forty years
from 1945 to 1985. Because he does not interpret their lives for his own
purposes, Hersey leaves many thoughtful questions for his readers. It is
interesting to note, however, that he spends more time on the life of the
Reverend Tanimoto and places his story last, intertwining it with landmarks in the production and testing of nuclear weapons.
The lives of the six survivors all took varying directions, just as they
had prior to the bombing. Some struggled to keep their families
together, some lost themselves in good works, and others found respite
from the memories of the bombing in the pursuit of pleasure and
wealth. Most of the survivors continued to have frustrating and debilitating illnesses due to the radiation poisoning or the wounds they
received the day of the bombing.
Hersey first considered the life of Mrs. Nakamura. Following 1945,
all of her life was a struggle filled with pain, uncertainty, and disability.
However, her travail said a great deal about her resilience and her quiet
human dignity. She adopted the philosophy of shikatata ga-nai, which
is a fatalistic phrase meaning “it can’t be helped.” Instead of giving in to
her disabilities and her pain, she forged a new life depending on herself
and providing for her children.
48
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Hersey may have used her story to show how the hibakusha were
discriminated against following the bombing. Her life also illustrated
the change in government policy to help the survivors long after the
bombing. Evidently, the politics of the situation lengthened the political debate. This theme of the government’s callous disregard to the
needs of its people was repeated over again in Mr. Tanimoto’s story.
Mrs. Nakamura’s indifference to peace rallies may indicate her belief
that the bombing was a historical and not a personal event. Her singleminded determination to avoid political issues and take care of her own
life may symbolize the reactions of many of the non-political “little
people” affected by the bombing of Hiroshima. They, along with
Mrs. Nakamura, did not have the luxury of asking, “Why me?”
Miss Sasaki’s experience the day of the bombing changed her life
forever. It led her to find a vocation that gave her life great meaning.
The reader might infer that the bombing, an event that took such
little heed of human life, left her wondering what she could do to affirm
life. As a Catholic nun and later a church administrator, she remembered the loneliness and listened to the faith she heavily relied upon
during the hours, days, and weeks of her pain following the bombing.
Perhaps her experience was the catalyst for this religious life-affirming
choice. Only when one has experienced great sorrow can one help
others with deep human empathy.
Miss Sasaki was a living presence that helped the dying find peace
She, like Mrs. Nakamura, realized that one can only look forward, never
back, after such devastation if one is going to have a life worth living
that honors so many who died.
In the years that followed the bombing, Dr. Sasaki was haunted by
his memories of those he couldn’t save and the deaths he couldn’t
honor. He appeared to insulate his thoughts with overworking and
larger and larger amounts of cash. The evidence of his memories
appears in his eventual reluctance to attend both his old haunts in
Hiroshima and his treatment of fewer and fewer hibakusha. Also, he
often pushed his family away by non-stop working hours.
Dr. Sasaki’s behavior in these years could reflect his attempts to outrun his own memories of death. His brush with lung cancer caused a
temporary change in his behavior: He seemed to spend more time with
his family. Later, the death of his wife was a devastating blow that
caused him once again to throw himself into long hours of work. But
after each of these reminders of life’s end, Dr. Sasaki once again worked,
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Five
49
made money, built larger businesses, and acquired more possessions.
It was as though he might be able to deaden the pain of memory.
Despite his vast enterprises and material success, perhaps he still
thought of the indelible images of that day so long ago.
Dr. Fujii’s life ended with his estranged family bitterly divided over
his property. Of the six survivors, he was the least physically affected by
the bombing and radiation sickness. He purposely pursued a hedonistic life, filling his years with pleasure. Much of this pattern of behavior
was evident before the bombing when he had his own hospital and
lucrative practice. Surrounding himself with luxuries and pleasure was
an innate part of his character. His time spent in New York simply
convinced him to indulge in acquiring still more expensive possessions.
He loved being the center of attention and enjoyed the publicity and
interviews from his trips to New York with the Hiroshima maidens.
But the end of his life revealed the fruitlessness of such occupations.
His family was estranged, his health was failing, and he had nothing
to lean on. Perhaps his suicide attempt—if it was that—was a way to
end his pain and suffering. His depression and sense of loss revealed a
lack of spiritual strength when life became difficult. Previously, acquiring material objects occupied his time and he didn’t have to think about
death. But, alone and in failing health, he had no choice.
Father Kleinsorge pursued a life of self-sacrifice in the years following the bombing. He purposely chose to deny his own medical difficulties so he could continue to help others. His stolid and uncomplaining
attitude revealed a character that saw problems and solved them. The
bombing brought out the best in his character but also left him with
broken health that plagued his attempts to help others.
He also had the ability to bring people together in common goals
and he made dependable judgments about their character. That was
why he saw Miss Sasaki’s needs and encouraged her to aspire to a religious life. The evidence of this trait in Father Kleinsorge was also
revealed in the many visitors who stopped and thanked him for his
advice and his help.
Of the six hibakusha, Father Kleinsorge perhaps suffered the greatest medical problems in the later years of his life. Maybe this was why
he identified more with hibakusha than with the Japanese. Perhaps this
is also why he—like Miss Sasaki—rededicated his life to a spiritual path
in the years after the bombing.
50
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
The section that discusses Mr.Tanimoto is the longest in the last
chapter. It is played out against the watershed events of the nuclear
armaments race. In less than his usual understated way, Hersey seems
to be asking what the conscience of the world learned from the horrible pain and deaths of the people who were the survivors of the first
atomic bomb.
Despite the fact that Mr. Tanimoto fell out of the peace movement
in Japan, he continued to live his life to help those who were hurt in the
bombing. One of those hurt was his daughter, Koko. She was subjected
to embarrassment when American and Japanese doctors measured her
growth in junior high. She was so traumatized by having to be naked in
early adolescence under the eyes of these physicians that she hid the
memory from herself for many years. Sent to America to go to college,
her fiancé left her because his father thought she could not have normal
children. This prejudice—also found in the story of Mrs. Nakamura’s
attempts to find work—seemed to be part of the uphill battle affecting
the lives of hibakusha.
Fund-raising for the hibakusha was the focus of Tanimoto’s life after
the bombing and it revealed his relentless endurance and stamina as
well as his remarkable and inspiring character. Mr. Tanimoto’s three
trips through hundreds of American cities seemed similar to his constant motion to help those hurt after the bombing. Just as he tirelessly
helped those in Asano Park, he also relentlessly crossed America looking for support to help those who had been disabled by the event. His
spiritual depth was revealed in two events in his quest for funds. On
the television show when he had to face the very man who dropped the
bomb on his city, he reacted with great dignity. His demeanor in the
face of this event displayed his character in spite of amazing insensitivity. His spiritual advancement and remarkable character is also revealed
when he prays for the U.S. Senate, a body that represented the very
country that had bombed Tanimoto’s city.
Politics is also part of this last chapter. Hersey showed the speculation of various government officials about Tanimoto’s motives. It is no
wonder that various government agencies questioned his sincerity and
saw him as a publicity hound; they could not understand the non-political reasons a person could have for helping others.
Tanimoto’s life is purposely presented last and is combined with
dates of nuclear armament and escalating atomic testing because it—
like Mrs. Nakamura’s story—reflects the continued indifference of
Critical Commentaries: Chapter Five
51
governments to the needs of their peoples. Countries pursue their own
agendas of proliferating armament despite Hersey’s record of what
nuclear bombs do to human lives. The final and obvious conclusion
one reaches is that the end of the game is total annihilation.
Always on the outskirts, Mr. Tanimoto lived to see the anti-nuclear
movement in Japan split up in the early 1960s. In 1982, Mr. Tanimoto
retired. Hersey ends Mr. Tanimoto’s epilogue with the idea that the minister’s memory of forty years before is getting as “spotty” as the memory
of the world when it comes to nuclear weapons. Presenting the benchmarks of the nuclear weapons race, Hersey emphasizes that the world
merely sees these dates as a news item and then forgets them. The answers
that are missing in this “aftermath” are whether the bomb will be used
again and whether the world learned a single thing from the people’s
suffering in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Glossary
debilitating
Diet
weakening or enfeebling.
the parliament of Japan.
attitudinizing
striking an attitude; posing.
Meiji Restoration revolution in Japanese life and government that
occurred after the accession of Emperor Mutsuhito (1867), characterized by the downfall of the shogun and feudalism and the creation of the modern state.
dendrology the scientific study of trees and woody plants, especially
their taxonomy.
redolent
sweet-smelling; fragrant.
lassitude a state or feeling of being tired and listless; weariness;
languor.
analogous similar or comparable in certain respects.
efficacious producing or capable of producing the desired effect;
having the intended result, effective.
latency
a state of being dormant or inactive.
cataract an eye disease in which the crystalline lens or its capsule
becomes opaque, causing partial or total blindness.
52
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
ostensibly apparently; seemingly.
admonition
an admonishing or warning to correct some fault.
self-abnegating
interest.
lacking consideration for oneself or one’s own
subjugation to be in a useful, helpful, or serving capacity, especially
in an inferior or subordinate capacity.
anomaly departure from the regular arrangement, general rule, or
usual method; abnormality.
neuralgia severe pain along the course of a nerve or in its area of
distribution.
atrophy
a wasting away, especially of body tissue or organs.
distilled spirits strong alcoholic liquor produced by distillation.
Esperanto an invented language, devised (1887) by Polish physician
L. L. Zamenhof (1859-1917) and proposed for use as an international (chiefly European) auxiliary language.
Comintern the international organization (Third International) of
Communist parties (1919-43) formed by Lenin to promote revolution in countries other than the U.S.S.R.
Pearl Buck (born Pearl Sydenstricker) 1892-1973; U.S. novelist
raised in China who won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for her novel, The
Good Earth.
cenotaph a monument or empty tomb honoring a person or persons whose remains are elsewhere.
Enola Gay the B-29 bomber that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima,
dubbed with this name to honor the pilot’s mother.
incarcerated
imprisoned; jailed.
diplomatic pouch sack or pouch with an opening at the top that
can be closed and used by governments to transport highly sensitive information.
deterrence the policy or practice of stockpiling nuclear weapons to
deter another nation from making a nuclear attack.
CHARACTER
ANALYSES
Miss Toshiko Sasaki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
Dr. Masakazu Fujii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura . . . . . . . . . . . .55
Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge . . . . . . . . . .56
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57
Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto
. . . . . . . . .58
54
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Miss Toshiko Sasaki
A clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works,
Toshiko Sasaki’s life is changed forever by August 6, 1945. Her traditional sense of duty to family and her uncomplaining physical suffering
are qualities that lead directly to her vocation as a nun. Ironically, the
bombing may have pointed her toward this conclusion.
Family and duty seem to occupy much of Miss Sasaki’s life. The
morning of the bombing, she is up at 3 a.m. making food for her family and preparing provisions to be taken to her mother and brother who
are both at a hospital. Even when she survives the blast, she devotes her
life to raising and caring for her brother and sister. Putting her own
ambitions aside, Miss Sasaki works as a bookkeeper to help pay for the
huge medical bills that arise when her brother is hurt in a car accident.
It is obvious that family and responsibility are the essence of Miss
Sasaki’s life.
After the bombing, Miss Sasaki endures loneliness and terrible pain.
Even after she is rescued, she is moved from one hospital to another, has
to endure varying medical opinions involving the loss of her leg, and
finally is given some treatment that leaves her crippled and depressed.
Eventually, she spends 14 months as a hospital patient, enduring numerous operations. When her fiancé deserts her, Miss Sasaki’s attitude is not
“poor me.” She begins to explore other possibilities.
Perhaps because of her experience, Miss Sasaki finds her true vocation: to become a nun and help people. She especially exudes an aura of
peace and calm for those who are dying, and she helps them die with tranquility. Those days, hours, and months of suffering after the bomb blast
have taken their toll on her, but she has also become stronger and deeper
in her faith. The comments she makes when she is honored at the end of
her career sum up the attitude that has made her a survivor: One should
only look forward and never back to give one’s life meaning.
Dr. Masakazu Fujii
Before the bombing, Dr. Fujii is a physician with compassion and
concern for his patients and workers. After he survives the blast, he
continues to help those around him even though he is terribly injured.
This is a decided change from his usual lifestyle where he enjoyed himself and “did not believe in working too hard.” Once he survives the
bombing he is forced to work to pay for his hedonistic pleasures.
Character Analyses
55
Unlike the other five survivors, Dr.Fujii is a wealthy physician with
his own private hospital before the bombing. He evacuated his family
from Hiroshima prior to August 6, fearing for their safety. In the
remainder of the book his family is rarely mentioned because his
values seem to be wealth, hedonistic pleasures, and status rather than
family values and domestic duties. The bombing ends this lifestyle only
temporarily.
Once the city begins reorganizing during the Allied occupation,
Dr. Fujii acquires a new clinic and rebuilds his practice. Now, however,
his interests involve learning languages so he can talk with occupation
officers. He restores his social life at the expense of time with
his family and surrounds himself with the upper echelon of the
enemy-turned-conquerors.
Dr. Fujii resumes his life of self-indulgence and frequents the dance
halls, geisha houses, and prostitution establishments. His interests
include alcohol, billiards, photography, dancing, mah-jongg, golf, and
baseball; these interests are topped only by his growing reputation as a
“playboy.” He joins an exclusive country club and also builds a sand
bunker and drive-net to practice golf in his garden.
His trips to the U.S. fuel yet another desire: to be like the American
doctors in New York. He is quite a celebrity with his jovial attitude and
impeccable manners. Desiring to imitate American lifestyles, he builds
a beautiful home and continues to surround himself with pleasures.
Throughout his life Dr. Fugii never fostered a spiritual life and his
family seemed to be an occasional distraction from his busy social affairs.
When he develops cancer, it appears that he attempts to end his life but
fails. His last years are sad and declining, and his life ends on a far different note than it was lived. Although his earlier years were pleasant
for him, they served to estrange him from his family, and in the end he
is depressed and disconsolate, with no spiritual reserves to draw upon.
Death is a specter that he cannot buy off or outrun.
Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura
The reader feels a great deal of sympathy for Mrs. Nakamura. Her
husband’s death, her pity for her neighbor who is taking apart his house,
and her concern for her children all paint a picture of a woman who had
many troubles in her life before the bomb even fell. Until her children
have adult lives of their own, her concern and duty are always to them.
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Her first thought when the bomb explodes is her children. Until they
are evacuated from Asano Park, her first thought as they are vomiting
and sick with radiation poisoning is again her children.
In the years following the bombing, Mrs. Nakamura, like Miss Sasaki,
never asks “Why me?” nor complains about her lot in life. Instead, she
embraces the Japanese concept, “shikatata ga-nai,” which loosely is “It
can’t be helped.” Never complaining, she struggles to survive after she
loses everything, and yet she is shrewd enough to ask the advice of Father
Kleinsorge when she is penniless. She does whatever she has to do (no
job is too humble) to pay the bills and support her family. Despite terrible medical problems, she struggles on, living quietly, avoiding peace
politics, and caring for her children until they are adults.
Despite many days of illness, Mrs. Nakamura manages to finish out
her working years and retire. Like Miss Sasaki, she does not look back,
but instead widens her circle of acquaintances and experiences, all the
while looking toward the future.
Mrs. Nakamura symbolizes the many Japanese for whom the bombing was not personal. It was yet another huge hurdle in a difficult and
uncompromising reality. While others attend peace rallies and demonstrations against the bomb, she avoids any political statements. A proud
woman, she steadfastly refuses government help until “finally” she picks
up a Health Book. Because her life has been very arduous both before
and after the bombing, she simply wants to be left alone to live out her
life in quiet dignity.
Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge
Father Kleinsorge, a German priest, leads a life of selflessness both
before and after the bombing. After the bombing he contends with the
effects of that illness for the remainder of his life but he struggles on,
often sacrificing his own health to help others.
His sense of duty is foremost in his mind. Feeling ill, he conducts
mass that August morning, stopping only when there is a siren. Coping
with serious radiation illness, he feels that it is his duty to stop at the
police station the day after the bombing and report the destruction on
behalf of the parish. He also goes to the mission house right after the
bombing to gather the records of the parish.
Character Analyses
57
Father Kleinsorge devotes the first days after the bombing to helping
others. Immediately after becoming aware of his surroundings, he dons
his military uniform so that others will see him as a helpful authority. He
begins digging people out of the debris. Every time someone comes to
him for help, he goes with him or her even though some trips end up
being fruitless. At Asano Park, the wounds he sees sicken him to the point
of making him nauseous. But he overcomes his horror and tends to sick
people for days, rarely stopping to help himself or to sleep. He sacrifices
his own health to help others.
In the years following the bombing, Father Kleinsorge continues to
help hundreds of people, both well and sick, again at the sacrifice of
his own well-being. He performs numerous baptisms, weddings, and
religious conversions, including that of Miss Sasaki. A good judge of
human nature, he sees in her the call to a life in the church, and he
encourages her to pursue that vocation. It is no wonder that near the
end of his life many people make pilgrimages to see him and thank him
for his help.
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki
Dr. Sasaki’s life is one of compassion, hard work, wealth, and ghosts.
He displays his compassion, and hard work is an essential throughout
his life. The pursuit of wealth sometimes seems to be his defense against
the ghosts that haunt him after August 6, 1945.
As a young doctor at the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima, Dr. Sasaki
is working toward his license by finishing physician certification.
After the bombing, Dr. Sasaki grabs every bandage he can find and
goes to work. Moving relentlessly from one patient to another, he works
for 19 hours straight until he can hardly see or wind bandages around
limbs anymore. Throughout his career, he works long hours taking care
of his patients. He also becomes an expert on the medical problems of
the hibakusha, reading about and researching the best procedures to
help them. There is no doubt that he is an excellent doctor.
His hard work allows him to amass a great deal of wealth. His nonstop pursuit of long hours and wealth seem to be a panacea for his
experience on August 6, 1945. Dr. Sasaki insulates himself from close
relationships and emotions by working long hours and seeing many
patients. However, when he is diagnosed with lung cancer, he begins to
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
spend more time with his wife and children and rekindles the compassion that he has always had. His wife’s death from breast cancer is a
terrible blow, resulting once again in his headlong pursuit of pleasure
and wealth. Readers wonder what drives him and what demons are
chasing him. Hersey explains in Sasaki’s later years.
The doctor avoids the Hiroshima district for a period of time and feels
relief when he sees fewer and fewer hibakusha. Sasaki’s fears of ghosts are
mentioned twice in the narrative. Because the Japanese revere their dead
and feel that it is their duty to give them proper rites of burial, Dr. Sasaki
is haunted by the hundreds of bodies that were not correctly disposed of
according to his cultural/religious beliefs. Even at the pinnacle of success
when he is surrounded by a loving family and has an estate worth a
fortune, Dr. Sasaki still lingers over the ghosts of those people who were
beyond his help.
The Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto
The Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto is a Methodist minister with a parish
in Hiroshima. A “cautious, thoughtful man,” he has sent his family to
the country. The concerns of his parish weigh on his mind. Throughout
the novel, Tanimoto’s acts of mercy and compassion are juxtaposed with
his feelings of helplessness and rage because so many need help and he
is only one man. His stamina is amazing both immediately following
the bombing and in the years when he tries to raise money and help for
the hibakusha.
Tanimoto’s stamina is almost legendary. He carries water to the
wounded and tirelessly ferries people to higher ground. For hours and
days, he physically carries people, rows a boat, organizes groups to help
each other, and rescues people from the river. Despite the horrendous
sights he sees, he never loses his civilized manners or behavior. When
he “borrows” a boat from five dead people, he asks their forgiveness.
His major concern is that he cannot stay with all of the people he helps,
and he has moments of great sorrow and rage when he realizes that
many of the people he helps drown anyway. Of the two girls he rescues
from the river, one dies almost immediately from shock. There are so
many people in need of help that he cannot begin to help them all, and
the numbers are unfathomable. Nevertheless, he works tirelessly, hour
after hour, to do what he can. This is the stamina that readers see again
when he crisscrosses the United States speaking tirelessly in support of
the hibakusha.
Character Analyses
59
Tanimoto’s sense of honor and duty is presented alongside his quiet
understanding of life’s ironies. When the Emperor speaks to the people
over the radio, Tanimoto is amazed and awe-struck that the Emperor
has deigned to speak to the “little people.” He is deeply moved by his
leader’s message; he concentrates less on the fact that they have lost the
war and more on the idea that an emperor would speak to his people.
Tanimoto also feels that if something has come out of all this, it is that
many people showed the spirit of their ancestors by “dying well.”
However, he also describes the listeners as shattered, broken, and tattered remnants of the “little people” who have suffered greatly.
Mr. Tanimoto also demonstrates forgiveness when he goes to the
bedside of Mr. Tanaka. This dying man had besmirched Tanimoto’s reputation in life, but in death the reverend forgives him and says a prayer
over his dying moments.
The story of the television show on which Mr. Tanimoto must confront the very man who dropped the bomb is astonishing. Showing his
sense of dignity and silencing his rage, Mr. Tanimoto faces the drunken
pilot with a sense of calm and indifference. Mr. Tanimoto’s civilized
demeanor mitigates what could have been a terrible scene.
CRITICAL ESSAY
Events Surrounding the First
Atomic Bombs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61
Critical Essay
61
Events Surrounding the First Atomic Bombs
Hiroshima still makes the headlines. Today, if a nuclear test occurs,
the leader who ordered it can expect to be the recipient of a telegram
from the mayor of Hiroshima. Until there are no more nuclear weapons
in the world, an eternal flame continues to burn at Peace Park,
Hiroshima. A plaque in a memorial at the park reads: “Let all the souls
here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.” The Smithsonian
Institute drastically had to alter a fiftieth anniversary exhibit about the
Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb, because veteran’s groups
protested that the exhibit made the Japanese look like innocent victims.
Fifty years after the bombing, a Gallup poll showed that senior citizens,
by a narrow margin, supported the bombing. Younger Americans, however, appeared to believe that the nuclear bombing of Japan was wrong.
Looking back at the bombing, historians find it easy to second-guess or
use hindsight. The lens through which we peer at that decision today is
different from the lens that people were looking through 1945. It is
important not to take such decisions out of their historical context, which
is difficult to do so many years after the fact. It makes more sense to consider what led to the decision based on the atmosphere of 1945 rather
than to try and weigh the pros and cons of the decision in our era.
Making the Decision
There were several factors involved in the decision to bomb
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Personalities, politicians, lack of understanding between cultures, the uncertainties of scientists, and top meetings
among world leaders all had something to do with the decision.
The creation of an atomic bomb began in 1941 when Franklin
Roosevelt was persuaded by Albert Einstein to fund the project. However, when Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, the bomb had not been
tested and scientists were not in agreement about its possible effects.
In fact, so little was known about this bomb that later strategists
figured some B-29s would have to follow after it to ensure a huge
conflagration.
With the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, a man
known for his common sense and decisiveness, became president. But
Truman was worried and unsure of himself as he took over the presidency. On April 24, he was given detailed information about the atomic
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
bomb. Two million dollars had been spent on the project but at this
point it had still not been tested. Truman was not yet aware of its capabilities, and he was thinking about an invasion of Japan.
American casualties and Japanese attitudes put pressure on the
leaders to end the war. The following month on May 7, Germany
surrendered unconditionally but the war with the Japanese raged on in
the Pacific. By June, American air strikes had left millions of Japanese
homeless and naval blockades cut off food. But still there was no surrender because to traditional Japanese thinking, it would mean total
disgrace. They feared that their emperor would be executed or his royal
family abolished. It was under these conditions that the Americans
began to discuss alternatives. Those alternatives were partly influenced
by the terrific number of American casualties in the island war with
Japan.
On June 18, Truman and his advisors held a conference to plan an
invasion of Japan. The invasion would begin on November 1, first
targeting the island of Kyushu and then Honshu in the following
March. Predictions of 31,000 to 50,000 American deaths in the first
month horrified President Truman. However, based on island combat
where the Japanese flew kamikaze missions and the death toll of Allied
soldiers was tremendous, the President and his advisors did not doubt
the determination of the Japanese. Truman approved the possible invasion plan. He also, however, considered the possibility of dropping the
ultimate weapon: the first atomic bomb. He felt that the Japanese
should have no warning because they might move American prisoners
of war to whatever target was announced. Still, the bomb had not been
tested and the American death toll rose considerably in the Pacific.
On the other hand, the Japanese were all but defeated militarily.
They began to dig in for a possible American invasion. They hoped to
cause enough American casualties to bring a negotiated peace. Perhaps
they would be able to keep their emperor.
Two events occurred in mid to late July that sealed the fate of the
citizens of Hiroshima. First, the Potsdam Conference began on July 15
in a suburb of Berlin and at the meeting were Winston Churchill, Joseph
Stalin, and Harry Truman. Second, during that conference the atomic
bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert. It was found to have the
explosive power of 15,000-20,000 tons of TNT. Messages to President
Truman, sent in code, indicated that the testing had been a huge success. On July 24, Truman decided to use the bomb. He told Joseph Stalin
Critical Essay
63
about the existence of the new weapon but Stalin already knew because
he had information from the Soviet agents who were working at the
Manhattan Project headquarters. The conference proceeded to issue the
Potsdam Declaration, explaining that the Japanese must surrender
unconditionally or there would be total destruction. The announcement
did not mention the fate of Emperor Hirohito. The Japanese government, hopelessly deadlocked in political arguing, made it clear they
would ignore the message.
The use of the bomb was inevitable because Americans shared the
position of their government: End the war as quickly as possible and
try to avoid an all out invasion with the loss of many lives. Americans
were war-weary by 1945. They had seen the bombing of Pearl Harbor,
kamikaze attacks, and horrible casualties in Okinawa and Iwo Jima. The
American public was ready to be done with it all. Public pressure was
intense. The mood was not positive toward anything but surrender.
Recent newspaper photos had shown American POWs beheaded by
Japanese soldiers, and everyone knew of the Bataan Death March. A
poll taken at that time showed that one third of Americans questioned
wanted to bring the Japanese emperor to justice and execute him.
Dropping the bomb
Why Hiroshima? After the blitz of London and the bombing of various German cities, it was no longer a problem in peoples’ minds to bomb
civilian areas during war. Hiroshima was Japan’s seventh largest city and
it had not been bombed as much as the other major cities of Japan. It had
factories that made war materials and it was also the headquarters of the
Japanese Second Army. The American government did not think there
were Allied prisoners of war in the area, but it was wrong. In the center
of the city was Hiroshima Castle, where 23 American prisoners of war
were incarcerated. The second choice for a target was Kokura, an industrial center and arsenal, or Nagasaki, a port city.
On July 31, Truman ordered the military to drop the bomb as soon
as the weather would permit. The President ordered Secretary of State
Stimson to carry out the orders so that military objectives, soldiers, and
sailors would be the targets. Only military targets were to be hit, not
women and children. The orders given by Truman show how little anyone knew about the bomb’s capability for widespread destruction. When
the bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, 70,000 men, women, and
children lost their lives instantly—none of them were military targets.
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
In the months to follow, another 50,000 died of injuries and radiation
poisoning. Looking down from the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped
the bomb, the co-pilot, Robert Lewis, wrote in his journal, “My God,
what have we done?”
Three days later, a second bomb—this time an implosion bomb
costing $400 million to develop—was dropped on Nagasaki. It has been
estimated that this bomb killed an additional 70,000 people. Ironically,
Emperor Hirohito had already decided to surrender before the second
bomb was even dropped.
American soldiers celebrated, downed all the beer they could find,
and danced upon hearing that the bomb had been dropped on Japan.
They were relieved that they would survive the war. One million troops
had already been called up to begin the final assault and invasion of
Japan, and it was estimated that as many as 20,000 Americans would
have died in the first month of fighting. There was great relief throughout the Allied world.
Details emerge
But time moved on, weeks passed, and eventually the gruesome
details of Hiroshima and Nagasaki began to emerge. John Hersey’s
Hiroshima, published in the New Yorker in 1946, had a remarkable
impact on public understanding of the event. Pictures emerged of cities
razed to the ground and people with horrible burns and life-changing
injuries and scars. President Truman, even in 1965, said that he would
not hesitate to drop the bomb again. Despite the conclusion of John
Hersey—that the world has an indistinct memory of the effects of this
bomb—the fact remains that it has not been used since the events were
reported so vividly in John Hersey’s Hiroshima.
CliffsNotes Review
Use this CliffsNotes Review to practice what you’ve learned in this book and
to build your confidence in doing the job right the first time. After you work
through the Question and Answer section, the Identify the Person section,
the Essay questions, and the fun and useful Practice Projects, you’re well on
your way to understanding a comprehensive and meaningful interpretation
of Hiroshima.
Q&A
1. Hersey appears to emphasize the idea that ______.
a. these six survivors were heroes
b. the wealthy stood a better chance of surviving than the poor
c. those who survived did so by chance
d. because the blast was so huge, location made little difference in who
survived
2. Irony can be found in ______.
a. Miss Sasaki being crushed under books
b. Dr. Fujii taking a friend to the train so that he wasn’t in bed, like he
normally would have been, when the bomb exploded
c. the all-clear siren sounded just before the bomb fell
d. all of the above
3. Which description is subjective?
a. Mr. Tanimoto sees his wife shortly after the bombing.
b. Miss Sasaki’s leg is broken during the bombing.
c. Dr. Fujii rebuilds his practice after he loses his hospital.
d. Dr. Sasaki reminds himself to be brave because he is Japanese.
4. The hibakushas’ lives were ______.
a. filled with honor because people respected their courage
b. made easier because the government paid their medical bills in full
c. difficult because people discriminated against them
d. none of the above
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
5. Forty years after the bombing, in “Aftermath,” Hersey discovers that
______.
a. all six of the people he described were alive and well
b. the world had continued to increase nuclear arms
c. Miss Sasaki had married and raised three daughters
d. Dr. Sasaki left the medical field and lectured all over the world
Answers: (1) c. (2) d. (3) d. (4) c. (5) b.
Identify the Person
Which survivor is being described in the following sentences:
1. Hopelessly overburdened, he tries to find doctors to come help at Asano
Park.
2. Working 19 hours straight, he does not realize how many people need his
help.
3. She threw her sewing machine into a cement tank filled with water when
she left her home.
4. Father Kleinsorge taught him German.
5. After the bombing, she learns bookkeeping, Latin, and French while pursuing work.
6. He was interviewed by Dr. Robert J. Lifton for the book, Death in Life:
Survivors of Hiroshima.
Answers: (1) Mr. Tanimoto. (2) Dr. Sasaki. (3) Mrs. Nakamura. (4) Dr.
Fujii. (5) Miss Sasaki. (6) Father Kleinsorge.
Essay Questions
1. How does Hersey use details to make his interviewees come alive for the
reader?
2. What techniques does Hersey use to show the limited viewpoints of each
person?
3. Where does Hersey use irony?
4. Examine carefully the factual details Hersey uses, such as the abnormal water
drops after the bombing. Why are these details necessary? Use examples.
CliffsNotes Review
67
5. Choose a survivor and explain what his or her actions the day of the bombing show about his or her character.
6. What are conditions like in Asano Park after the bombing?
7. What glimpses do we get of Japanese culture, values, and attitudes?
8. What attitudes do the six survivors have in common that help them get
on with their lives in Chapter 5?
9. What statement is Hersey making with the details he uses, in Chapter 5,
to explain Mr. Tanimoto’s life?
10. Study Chapter 5, “The Aftermath.” How does this chapter affect the
reader’s reaction to the earlier chapters? Does it provide unity?
Practice Projects
1. Do research on the decision to drop the atomic bomb. You can find Web
sites with many official documents that explain the thinking of the time.
Present arguments both pro and con.
2. Pretend you are one of the survivors of the bombing. Write ten journal
entries and explain what you are seeing and feeling at strategic points of
the bombing.
3. If you were Mr. Tanimoto and you were writing letters to your friend in
America, the Reverend Mr. Marvin Green, what would you tell him in
the aftermath of the bombing? Write five letters on various days that
explain what you are seeing and feeling.
4. Research the effects of radiation poisoning. How do the cold, hard facts
compare with what you have read about the survivors in the novel?
5. Where do you see glimpses of Hersey’s attitude toward the Japanese in his
book? How would American readers have reacted to his viewpoint in
1946? Today?
6. Make a collage of August 6, 1945. Explain why you chose the pictures
used to make the collage.
7. If someone were to add a sixth chapter to this book in 2045, what would
it be about? Be sure that your content is consistent with Hersey’s thinking and structure.
8. Use pictures from this event to illustrate a graphic/technology presentation of what the book is about.
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
9. Create a Web site about the book using Hersey’s background, a map, photographs from the time, and your reaction. Design pages to inform and
involve your audience, and invite readers to post their thoughts and
responses to the book.
10. Prepare an interview with friends playing the roles of the six survivors.
Ask for their impressions of the experience (using the book to help you).
Conduct the interview in person or on videotape.
CliffsNotes Resource Center
The learning doesn’t need to stop here. CliffsNotes Resource Center shows
you the best of the best — links to the best information in print and online
about the author and/or related works. And don’t think that this is all we’ve
prepared for you; we’ve put all kinds of pertinent information at
www.cliffsnotes.com. Look for all the terrific resources at your
favorite bookstore or local library and on the Internet. When you’re online,
make your first stop www.cliffsnotes.com where you’ll find more
incredibly useful information about Hiroshima.
Books
This CliffsNotes book, published by Hungry Minds, Inc., provides a meaningful interpretation of Hiroshima. If you are looking for information about
the author and/or related works, check out these other publications:
Children of Hiroshima, edited by Dr. Arata Osada, was first published in 1951. It
contains 105 accounts selected from the writings of 1,000 children experienced
the bombing. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
Day One: Before Hiroshima and After, by Peter Wyden, has photographs and chapters on politics, the decision, the bombing and aftermath, and Hiroshima today.
Index and notes are included. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.
Death in Life, by Robert Jay Lifton, contains interviews with survivors; their words
are interspersed between the comments of Lifton, a Yale psychiatry professor.
New York: Random House, 1967.
Hiroshima in History and Memory, edited by Michael J. Hogan, has nine essays
about the history of the decision to drop the bomb, the memories of the event,
and the Enola Gay exhibit controversy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996.
Hiroshima: Three Witnesses, edited and translated by Richard H. Minear, is comprised of the prose and poetry (1945-1952) of three Japanese authors who
survived the bombing. New York: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Hiroshima’s Shadow, edited by Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, is a revisionist
assessment of the bombing, the Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibit controversy,
early critics of the bombings, essays about Hersey’s book, and survivor accounts.
Stony Creek, Conn: Pamphleteer’s, 1998.
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
John Hersey Revisited, by David Sanders, discusses Hersey’s life and each of his writings, and contains a chronological time line. Part of Twayne’s United States
Authors Series, edited by Warren French. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1991.
Return to Hiroshima, by Betty Jean Lifton, contains photographs (by Eikoh Hosoe)
of Hiroshima before and after the bombings, survivors, and individuals who
were injured in the bombings. New York: Antheneum, 1970.
Target Hiroshima: Deak Parsons and the Creation of the Atomic Bomb, by Albert B.
Christman and Al Christman, discusses the role of Parsons in the building of
the first bombs and the Manhattan Project. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute
Press, 1998.
With Hiroshima Eyes, by Joseph Gerson, who works for the American Friends Service Committee, is a harsh indictment of nuclear weapons and the morality of
the bombing; it contains testimony of hibakusha. Philadelphia: New Society
Publishers, 1995.
It’s easy to find books published by Hungry Minds, Inc. You’ll find them
in your favorite bookstores (on the Internet and at a store near you). We
also have three Web sites that you can use to read about all the books we
publish:
■
www.cliffsnotes.com
■
www.dummies.com
■
www.idgbooks.com
Magazines and Journals
Hersey, John. “War: It’s Hard to Get It Right,” New York Times Book Review,
10 September 1989, 1. Hersey describes his early years as a World War II
correspondent.
“Hiroshima: Why We Did It,” Newsweek (Special Issue), 24 July 1995, 16-41.
Discusses the bombing, the planned invasion, eye witness accounts, the aftermath for the survivors, and nuclear armament as of 1995.
Loebs, Bruce. “Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Commonweal, 18 August 1995, 11+.
Discusses the main questions that are still debated over the bombing and takes
the view that the bombing of Hiroshima was necessary but the bombing of
Nagasaki was not.
Maddox, Robert James. “The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Atomic
Bomb,” American Heritage, May 1995, 70+. The thesis is that the decision to
drop the bomb was unavoidable and the repercussions were vast.
CliffsNotes Resource Center
71
Sayle, Murray. “Cities of the Bomb,” Conde Nast Traveler, November 1999, 262-271.
Provides photographs, maps, current day landmarks of the cities, and information about the peace movement.
“Did the Bomb End the War?” The New Yorker, 31 July 1995, 40-64. Discusses
perspectives on the bombing, paintings by the survivors, and an excerpt from
Hersey’s Hiroshima.
“Talk of the Town,” Newsweek, 9 September 1946, 69-71. Describes events surrounding the writing and publishing of Hiroshima in the New Yorker.
Video and Audio
Hiroshima. Audio Editions, 1995. Read by Edward Asner. Includes Chapter 5,
“The Aftermath.”
Hiroshima: Why the Bomb Was Dropped. Peter Jennings special report. ABC Television,
27 July 1995.
Internet
Check out these Web resources for more information about John Hersey
and Hiroshima:
A-Bomb WWW Museum, — provides peace messages, antinuclear testing essay, many pictures of the bombs, and information on
numerous topics about the bombings.
City of Hiroshima Home Page, http://www.city.
hiroshima.jp/C/index-E.html — offers extensive letters,
protests, materials on peace initiative, a history of the city, current attractions, and links.
Hiroshima Directory: Historical Perspective and Study, —
features links to numerous official and unofficial Web pages, the Enola
Gay Exhibit controversy, conferences, and audio materials.
Hiroshima: Was It Necessary?, — provides extensive pages and
links about public opinion, book lists, who’s who, and debate over the
bombing. Doug Long, a student of the bombing and a member of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, created the Web
site.
Leo Szilard Online Home Page, — has many documents about
the bomb and the decision to use it as well as links to other sites.
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CliffsNotes Hiroshima
Hiroshima Survivors, http://inicom.com/hibakusha/ —
has 16 eyewitness accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima from the video
“Hiroshima Witness” produced by Hiroshima Peace Cultural Center
and NHK (Japanese Public Broadcasting Company).
Hiroshima Photographs, — is sponsored by Lewis and Clark
College and has a huge photograph gallery by Japanese photographer
Hiromi Tsuchida. There are pictures following the bombing, portraits
of survivors and their accounts, and photos of items from the Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Museum.
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Index
F
Fling and Other Stories (Hersey), 5
Fujii, Masakazu
actions of, 25, 26, 31
character of, 13, 29, 54–55
A
G
Algiers Motel Incident, The (Hersey), 5
Aspects of the Presidency (Hersey), 5
atomic bomb
aftermath of, 40, 41–42
dropping of, 16, 17, 26–27, 61–64
nature of, 34
public reaction to, 36, 56, 64–65
radio broadcast about, 31
ghosts, fear of, 57–58
government as character, 34, 36–37, 50
B
Bell for Adano, A (Hersey), 3–4, 8, 9, 10
Blues (Hersey), 5
book resources, 69–70
Buck, Pearl, 47
C
Call, The (Hersey), 5
Cannon, Frances Ann, 2–3
characters
governments as, 34, 36–37, 50
overview of, 18–19, 20
viewpoints of, 22, 27–28
See also specific characters
Child Buyer, The (Hersey), 4
children, effects on, 42
Churchill, Winston, 62
common man in stories, 2, 3, 5, 10
Conspiracy, The (Hersey), 5
Cousins, Norman, 47
D
H
Here to Stay (Hersey), 4
Hersey, John Richard
career of, 2–5, 9–10
life of, 2, 4–6
writing style of, 8–9, 26–27, 41
hibakusha, 12, 13, 45, 48, 50
Hirohito, Emperor, 37, 63, 64
Hiroshima, Japan, 14, 18, 40–41, 61, 63
Hiroshima (Hersey), 4, 5, 8, 9, 65
I
imagery. See symbolism
In the Valley (Hersey), 3
Internet resources, 69, 71–72
irony, 21–22, 33–34, 37
K
Kaufman, Barbara Day Addams, 3
Kennedy, John F., 3
Kleinsorge, Wilhelm
actions of, 24, 25, 26, 31, 32, 35, 40,
45–46
character of, 13, 20, 28, 49, 56–57
Hersey and, 8
radiation sickness of, 39, 41, 49
Knox, Frank, 3
death and medical assistance, 27, 32, 41
L
E
Letter to the Alumni (Hersey), 5
Lewis, Robert, 64
Lewis, Sinclair, 2
Life magazine, 2, 3, 4, 8
Life Sketches (Hersey), 5
Einstein, Albert, 61
Ellison, Ralph, 5
emotions, numbing of, 28
Enola Gay, 61, 64
74
CliffsNotes Hiroshima
literary techniques. See also characters;
symbolism
imagery, 40–41
irony, 21–22, 33–34, 37
setting, 18
suspense, 19
writing style, 8–9, 26–27, 41
M
magazine/journal resources, 70–71
Marmot Drive, The (Hersey), 4
Men on Bataan (Hersey), 3
merciful acts, accounts of, 28–29
N
Nagasaki, Japan, 33, 64
Nakamura, Hatsuyo
actions of, 24, 26
character of, 13, 47, 55–56
radiation sickness of, 39
Nakamura, Toshio, 35
New Yorker magazine, 2, 4, 8
P
Potsdam Conference, 62–63
R
radiation sickness, 39, 41
Roosevelt, Franklin, 61
Ross, Harold, 8
S
Sasaki, Terufumi (Dr.)
actions of, 25, 27, 32, 35
character of, 13, 20, 29, 48–49, 57–58
radiation sickness of, 39
Sasaki, Toshiko (Miss)
character of, 12, 20, 48, 54
Kleinsorge and, 39
vocation of, 46, 48
setting of story, 18
Shawn, William, 8
Single Pebble, A (Hersey), 4
Soviet agents, 63
Stalin, Joseph, 62–63
survival theme, 3, 4, 21, 41–42
suspense, 19
symbolism
books, being crushed by, 22
chopsticks, 20
fan, 18
feverfew, 40
images of death, 34–35, 40–41
light, 18–19
standing between opposites, 36
T
Tanimoto, Kiyoshi
actions of, 24, 25, 26, 31, 33, 34–35
character of, 13, 20–21, 28, 33, 35–36,
50, 58–59
radiation sickness of, 39
Tanimoto, Koko, 50
themes
common man, 2, 3, 5, 10
government disregard, 48, 50–51
helplessness, 34–35
impersonal aspects of war, 42
suffering, 27, 32, 41
survival, 3, 4, 21, 41–42
Time magazine, 2
Too Far to Walk (Hersey), 4
Truman, Harry, 61–62, 65
V
video and audio resources, 71
V-J Day, 33
W
Wall, The (Hersey), 4
war, effects of, 42
War Love, The (Hersey), 4
Web site resources, 69, 71–72
White Lotus (Hersey), 4
Writer’s Craft, The (Hersey), 5
Y
Yale University, 2, 6