Hiroshima By John Hersey

Hiroshima by John Hersey recounts the drop of the first atomic bomb by the United States of America. The novel follows the lives of six survivors and their experiences the day of the bombing and the days after. Hersey avoids discussing the ethics of the bomb, but instead focuses on how lives were drastically changed. The lesson to be drawn from this novel is that regardless of whether or not dropping the bomb was “right”, it is important to understand the struggle of the citizens of Hiroshima. One should not only consider the massive loss of life, but also the difficulty for the survivors to continue living. The primary effect on the citizens were their injuries. Miss Sasaki, a young woman working at East Asia Tin Works, was crushed by a bookcase after the bomb was dropped. She believed her leg to be severed and was unable to escape without help from others. Her leg, although it was not severed, was seriously broken and hanging off her knee

Tanimoto ran into his neighbor, Mrs. Kamai, while tending to the injured at the evacuation area. She was holding her dead infant and asked Mr. Tanimoto to find her husband. She wanted her husband to see their daughter one last time (41). This poor woman was so distraught over the loss of her child and did not have her husband to grieve with her. She continued holding the body of her daughter for several days. Dr. Sasaki was working at the Red Cross Hospital at the time of the bomb and was overloaded with injured people from both inside the hospital and out. He worked for three days, only sleeping for one hour. He was afraid his mother would think he was dead because he hadn’t come home, which he usually did every night. Finally, overwhelmed with the thought of his mother assuming him to be dead, he went home on the third day. Upon arriving he discovered that his mother had been visited by one of his nurses and told her Dr. Sasaki was alive. Exhausted from his work and worry, he slept for seventeen hours straight