Hiroshima, By John Hersey

August 6, 1945, the ending of the second world war, the United States of America dropped the world’s first Uranium-235 bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Now known to the world as the first of two bombs used to end World War II. In the novel Hiroshima, John Hersey uses six different individual’s experiences to tell this meaningful piece of history. A young woman, a physician, a widowed tailor, a German Jesuit, a surgeon and a minister. Each in different locations throughout the city, some as close as 1,350 yards from the center explosion, and others farther away from the blast. All saw the bright flash from the weapon's detonation and had separate thoughts. Each experienced different medical struggles months following the bomb. Hersey showed the

They attempted to generate invasion plans and other ideas, but they all resulted in a great deal of a loss in numbers. With the rumor of German forces developing a radioactive weapon, the U.S. began researching and developing their own; the Manhattan Project. After several years of research and number crunching the United States developed two atomic bombs; the uranium-235, and the plutonium-239. Hiroshima deals with the uranium-235, known as the "Little Boy," but don't be deceived by its name, for it weighed nine thousand pounds and a force equal to twelve thousand five hundred tons of TNT. So dropping the Little Boy on Hiroshima resulted in a vast amount of damage and deaths. Truman, blinded by his belief the bomb would shorten the war, advised dropping the bomb without fully knowing the effects the bomb would cause. Even the U.S. public was uninformed of the repercussions of the bomb. At the time the public was all for using the weapon. Even after it dropped, very few American citizens felt remorse or ashamed for using it against another country. Maybe they didn't regret causing so much damage because of their lack of knowledge about the bomb. These mistakes can be learned from and can better a nation. In this case, the citizens of the U.S. need to educate themselves on new weapons, and what the government does in this nation and around the world. By being educated, things that

The portion of the book the replays through everyone’s mind is the sight of Hiroshima right after the bomb was dropped. The city ablaze in flames, homes, and buildings destroyed, voices calling out from the debris, many burned, and patterns from clothing tattooed on their skin. Families are separated, and family members lost in the rubble not to be heard from again. People are changed for the rest of their lives. While some momentarily try to forget that happened, like the lady fixing her kimono on the riverside, others know their lifestyle will never be the same. The radiation will change the way they work or not. It will forever be etched in the reader's mind and leave them feeling impacted. They might prefer nuclear weapons or equal weaponry not to be used due to the outcome they can produce. The devastation that Hersey writes shows the disaster down to a woman mending her kimono in the midst of chaos, patterns burned off from clothing or being penetrated by a thousand pieces of splintered