Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Hiroshima john hersey essay
Hiroshima by john hersey paper
The idea of fate
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Hiroshima john hersey essay
Josue Sanchez
10/27/15
Hiroshima Primary Analysis II War. A topic seemed as only a means to an end. When most people think of war, they see death as an inevitability, where soldiers lay down their lives for their countries, their beliefs. Some can see the effects it has on their nation, but no one has experienced this destruction as first handedly as the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. John Hersey’ 1946 work, Hiroshima, drew on the accounts of survivors of the atomic bomb. The term ‘hibakusha’ refers to those left alive after the atomic bomb was dropped, who faced discrimination because of its effects. So the people of Hiroshima had varying feelings towards the bomb, from blatant disregard, to accusations towards the U.S. and local government. John Hersey included survivors’ accounts, repetitiveness of destruction through statistics, and detailed descriptions of injuries and death, to direct feelings of loss, sadness, and anger towards the reader. Life, no matter how long, is frail and can be changed in an instant. This was made apparent to the people of Hiroshima on August 6,
…show more content…
Some of the people saw the bombs’ effects as a good thing for the Japanese people. They saw Japanese come together, and because of it, felt an “elated community spirit” (87). Others saw the atomic bomb as akin to a natural disaster, like a flood or a typhoon. It was something incomprehensible, and so they pushed it out of their mind. One phrase they used to summarize their opinion over the bomb was “shikata ga nai” (89). For them it meant there was nothing they could have done to stop it, so they shouldn’t worry about it. The most negative of the groups felt that the blame fell upon the U.S. for using the bomb. Dr. Sasaki, one of the survivors Hersey wrote about, stated, “Those who chose to use the bomb should all be hung”
The book “Hiroshima,” written by John Hersey is an alluring piece coupled with an underlining, mind grabbing message. The book is a biographical text about the lives of six people: Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamura, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki, and Rev. Tanimoto, in Hiroshima, Japan. It speaks of these aforementioned individuals’ lives, following the dropping of the world’s first atomic bomb on 06 Aug 1945, and how it radically changed them, forever. John Hersey, the author of “Hiroshima,” attempts to expose the monstrosity of the atomic bomb, through his use of outstanding rhetoric, descriptive language, and accounts of survivors. He also attempts to correlate the Japanese civilians of Hiroshima to the American public, in hope that Americans
watching a neighbor tearing down his house because it lay in the path of an
warnings of intruder planes coming in the area. It talked about how a lot of
In the book Hiroshima, author paints the picture of the city and its residents' break point in life: before and after the drop of the "Fat Boy". Six people - six different lives all shattered by the nuclear explosion. The extraordinary pain and devastation of a hundred thousand are expressed through the prism of six stories as they seen by the author. Lives of Miss Toshiko Sasaki and of Dr. Masakazu Fujii serve as two contrasting examples of the opposite directions the victims' life had taken after the disaster. In her "past life" Toshiko was a personnel department clerk; she had a family, and a fiancé. At a quarter past eight, August 6th 1945, the bombing took her parents and a baby-brother, made her partially invalid, and destroyed her personal life. Dr. Fujii had a small private hospital, and led a peaceful and jolly life quietly enjoying his fruits of the labor. He was reading a newspaper on the porch of his clinic when he saw the bright flash of the explosion almost a mile away from the epicenter. Both these people have gotten through the hell of the A-Bomb, but the catastrophe affected them differently. Somehow, the escape from a certain death made Dr. Fujii much more self-concerned and egotistic. He began to drown in self-indulgence, and completely lost the compassion and responsibility to his patients.
Prior and during the war, the Japanese were known for their citizens’ extreme loyalty and commitment to their nation, but after the dropping of the atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some of these feelings diminished within the Japanese nation. Prior to the dropping of the atomic bomb, over 70% of people in Japan believed that their nation could come out on top in the war even after more than a decade of constant fighting and the Japanese being on the defensive for over three years since the Battle of Midway. Directly after the use of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the percentage of Japanese people that believed that defeat was inevitable rose to over 50%. Many people in the two cities that were bombed by the United States were affected more so than the rest of the Japanese population. For example, a 25% increase in suicidal thoughts was reported in the two cities struck by America’s new deadly weapon.
...ar the use of weapons of this magnitude, the American idea of the Japanese people has changed, and we now have set up preventions in the hope of avoiding the use of nuclear weaponry. John Hersey provides a satisfactory description of the atomic bombing. Most writers take sides either for or against the atom bomb. Instead of taking a side, he challenges his readers to make their own opinions according to their personal meditations. On of the key questions we must ask ourselves is “Are actions intended to benefit the large majority, justified if it negatively impacts a minority?” The greatest atrocity our society could make is to make a mistake and not learn from it. It is important, as we progress as a society, to learn from our mistakes or suffer to watch as history repeats itself.
The non-fiction book Hiroshima by John Hersey is an engaging text with a powerful message in it. The book is a biographical text about lives of six people Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamura, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki and Rev. Tanimoto in Hiroshima, Japan and how their lives completely changed at 8:15 on the 6th of August 1945 by the dropping of the first atomic bomb. The author, John Hersey, through his use of descriptive language the in book Hiroshima exposes the many horrors of a nuclear attack.
These anecdotes show that Hiroshima had no united political or nationwide reaction to the attack, however, after the bomb, all the affected came together as one community despite their differences. “One feeling they did seem to share, however, was a curious kind of related community spirit. . . Pride in the way they and their fellow survivors had stood up to a dreadful ordeal’’ (Hersey p.). The attack had different effects on the patients.
The Japanese remember the day that went down in history every year on August 6th. Dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a extremely difficult decision to make, knowing how many lives that would be lost in result of this action was the main reason it was so difficult. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer was the chief scientist in charge of the atomic bomb project. He predicted that no more than twenty thousand Japanese would be killed when the bomb detonated. Nobody realized, however, that two solitary B-29 planes would not cause the Japanese that lived in Hiroshima to retreat into the bomb shelters. The citizens of Hiroshima were used to seeing planes that went on missions taking photos of the ground below, and spies. If they did go to some of the designated bomb shelters that were built, thousands of lives could have potentially been saved. Even though many more people were killed than it was originally thought, these atomic bombs were the reason why World War II ended. If the war was to continue, it would have brought about deaths of thousands of American soldiers, and the soldiers of many other countries. When the news about the dropping of the bomb was officially announced, Americans were overwhelmed that their soldiers could finally return home and be safe with their
In the article “My Son, You Must Remember: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in William Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness” by Virginia Nickels, she reflects on William Styron who was a Marine officer during World War II. Remembering his fear approaching the Japanese invasion and recalling that 17,000 of American soldiers have already died. Nickels uses the book Lie Down in Darkness to show how not only the Japanese felt about the bombing on Hiroshima but also how the Americans felt. This show a very large difference because some Americans at the time didn’t even know that this atomic bomb had been built while others perceived the atomic bomb as the most versatile tool of the 20th century. For example, “Winkler cites one farmer’s letter inquiring as to where he could purchase a small atomic bomb to remove tree stumps from his fields, as a dynamite proved unsatisfactory” (Nickels 8). This is showing how some Americans are taking the bomb as almost a joke. Whereas, on the other hand, “particularly Berger’s identification of the inherent evil in mankind and Harry’s regret over the loss of Japanese lives”(Nickels 6). This is showing how some Americans post war did feel a sense of guilt for all the lives lost and how their attacks no longer held to their original innocence. Due to such a difference in feelings
John Berger is a European writer, artist, and intellectual. He published “Hiroshima” which first appeared in 1981 in the journal New Society, and later in his essay collection The Sense of Sight in 1985. He argues that we should look beyond the statistics to see the reality of the events that occurred during the bombing of Hiroshima. As Berger declared, “I refrain from giving the statistics: how many hundreds of thousands of dead, how many injured, how many deformed children” (Berger 11). The...
The fateful decision was made on July 25, 1945, the day when the official bombing orders were placed on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was on this day that sent Miss Torako and many others like her to face their unfortunate doom in the microcosm of the end of the world. But it was only a few months later, on the Sixth and Ninth of August 1945, that these poor victims actually get to experience this tragedy. Some people estimated no more than 400,000 people were truly victimized from the effects, others said more. But even now, almost seventy years later after this terrible calamity, people were still utterly disgusted but gruesomely fascinated at the true brutality that these two atomic bombs brought to the world. This fact made people argued and debated for decades on end. Two sides, two perspectives, absolutely and completely different from one another, but nonetheless, never came to a proper conclusion. Should the United States really have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan? Was it, in all reality, truly necessary? To put it blatantly, yes, the United States should have dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan. It had to have been done. With those conditions a...
As World War 2, came to a close, The United States unleashed a secret atomic weapon upon the enemy nation of Japan that was quickly recognized as the most powerful wartime weapon in human history. They completely destroyed the entire Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and essentially vaporized countless innocent Japanese lives. Some historians believe that it was a foolish, brutal decision to use the atomic bomb on a weakened Japan, and that the civilians of the country did not deserve that kind of mass-annihilation. On the opposite side, other historians assert that dropping the bomb saved countless American and Japanese lives by ending the war faster than a regular invasion would have. What is undisputed is that this sad event dramatically changed the course of human history.
Yet, despite all that, the weapon of massive destruction ended the war, and saved more lives than ended; it was vital to end the war; the Japanese cabinet had vowed to sacrifice as many lives to defend their homeland. The devastating firebombing of Tokyo had not caused the officials to waver. Only something as powerful as an atomic bomb was sufficient to convince Emperor Hirohito to stop the war on reasonable terms. While it was an American hand that released the bomb, and the Japanese died in droves, the bomb was everyone and their offspring’s problem. Had the Japanese, or Germans, or the British developed the bomb first, they surely would have used it. No one’s hands were entirely clean. Many had lamented and rejoiced all the same of the destruction of Hiroshima, thus making it The World’s Bomb.
"Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky . Mr. Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it traveled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed like a sheet of sun. John Hersey, from Hiroshima, pp8 On August 6, 1945, the world changed forever. On that day the United States of America detonated an atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Never before had mankind seen anything like. Here was something that was slightly bigger than an ordinary bomb, yet could cause infinitely more destruction. It could rip through walls and tear down houses like the devils wrecking ball. In Hiroshima it killed 100,000 people, most non-military civilians. Three days later in Nagasaki it killed roughly 40,000 . The immediate effects of these bombings were simple. The Japanese government surrendered, unconditionally, to the United States. The rest of the world rejoiced as the most destructive war in the history of mankind came to an end . All while the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki tried to piece together what was left of their lives, families and homes. Over the course of the next forty years, these two bombings, and the nuclear arms race that followed them, would come to have a direct or indirect effect on almost every man, woman and child on this Earth, including people in the United States. The atomic bomb would penetrate every fabric of American existence. From our politics to our educational system. Our industry and our art. Historians have gone so far as to call this period in our history the Òatomic ageÓ for the way it has shaped and guided world politics, relations and culture.