John Hersey's Hiroshima

John Hersey's Hiroshima

John Hersey's Hiroshima is a factual account about the day the United States

government dropped the first atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. John

interviewed six survivors and reported their stories in a factual but

interesting fashion. He gives a brief description of each person and tells

of his or her daily activities both before and after the explosion. Hersey's

descriptions of people and events give the reader a feeling of actually being

at the scene. He intensifies each character's need to survive. The sense of

survival is deeply rooted in the hearts of most people.

One of the survivors ("hibakusha" as they were known), Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura,

is described as "…a tailor's widow, [who] stood by the window of her kitchen,

watching a neighbor tearing down his house because it lay in the path of an

air-raid-defense fire lane"(1). I was very impressed by Mrs. Nakamura and

her determination to survive and to help her children survive. After the

bomb exploded she found herself being thrown into the next room and buried

under debris; but the cries of her youngest child Myeko made her break free

to rescue her children. After struggling through debris and making a path,

she found all three of her children and took them outside. However, they had

nothing on but underwear. Even though it was summer she feared that the

children might catch cold. She went back into the house and retrieved

clothing and, oddly e...