A blinding flash...
Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt urging him to develop an atomic bomb, fearful that the Germans would be first. Einstein latter said it was the greatest mistake he ever made. Within a few short years of that letter, humans mastered the technique of obtaining a tremendous amount of energy by eliminating matter, expressed by a very familiar formula. The first demonstration of this mastery occurred in the New Mexican desert, in July, 1945, and within less than a month, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Within a year of the bombing, which was instrumental event in bringing the Second World War to an end, John Hersey wrote this poignant account of six survivors, each of whom were between a mile or two from ground zero, and each in their way was lucky, or unlucky, to have survived. Hersey tells the accounts of two women: a clerk in the personnel department, and a tailor's widow; and of four men: two medical doctors, a Japanese Methodist minister and a German Catholic priest. Hersey tells their stories with a very flat affect, in that style of "just stating the facts," and allowing the horror which occurred to these six, as well as others, speak for itself. Time and again Hersey selects the detail to bring this horror home, from the mother who held her dead baby for four days, as it was decomposing, awaiting the return of her husband, to the still alive anti-aircraft crew, whose faces had "melted" in the blinding heat. All the emergency services were eliminated or overwhelmed, and one of the two doctors above was the only one staffing the sole hospital. Supplies and exhaustion constrained him to perform only the most rudimentary first aide.
Most of the book is focused on the immediate impact on these six, over the first 72 hours. But Hersey does have an informal "epilogue" section that covers their lives over the following six months, and the arrival of Allied occupation forces.
Because it was the first use of nuclear weapons in war, Hiroshima receives a disproportionate share of the attention. No similar book has ever been written about Nagasaki, bombed three days latter, with almost the same number killed. Also, the Allies had deliberately fire bombed cities such as Tokyo, and Dresden with "conventional" weapons, with at least as many casualties. Does it matter if your face is melted by fire bombs, or an atomic weapon? There is a difference though, in that there are the lingering effects of radiation, which quite often includes death, that occur with the survivors of an atomic bomb attack.
I've been to the A-bomb museum in Hiroshima, and consider it quite bias against the Americans, in that all causative reasons for such an attack are not mentioned. It is presented very much in the form that this was a cruel experiment, conducted at the very end of the war. Hersey's book however, I consider fair and factual. He allows the horror of war to speak for itself. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the immediate likelihood of nuclear war has been reduced, but with the increased proliferation of the bomb, coupled with on-going wars, the chance of another use of the bomb, even by accident, remains high.
Hersey's account of the lives of six people at Hiroshima should be part of the core curriculum in every American high school. A solid 5-star read.
(P.S. I didn't read this book in Spanish; hopefully Amazon will move the numerous reviews of this book to an English language version of the book)
Cancer Anyone?
I can't begin to imagine the horror of it. The flash burns, some with flesh pulling off. Eyes hollowed out. Fires. Thirsty but barely able to open their mouths to take in water. Vomiting. No wonder it took the United States so long to help the Jews during the holocaust that claimed so many lives. They were too busy in their own version of the American holocaust against Japan.
This book mentions a second atomic bomb that was dropped on Japan. This one not in Hiroshima. It does not detail that event. Just mere mention. I was not aware of a 2nd atomic bomb being detonated in Japan. Toward the end of the book, it accounts various bomb-test sites of both atom bombs and hydrogen bombs and the testing countries. Got to wonder how much of this radiation is in our drinking water and soil, none of which was contained at the test sites I'm sure as waters do flow to other sites.
"Hiroshima" follows the lives of a handful of people that survived the A-Bomb.
Required reading for school?
Our sonds teacher made him read this. He actually talked about it quite a bit and seemed to really learn alot about it's history.
I was pretty impressed that a 15 year old actually found it intruiging enough to WANT to read it. KUDOS to the required reading for school. Wish I could have found it used, but ho hum.
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