Analysis of Hersey and Hiroshima
Analysis of Hersey and Hiroshima
Hiroshima traces the experiences of six residents who survived the atomic blast of August 6, 1945 at 8:15 am. The six people vary in age, education, financial status and employment. Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a personnel clerk; Dr. Masakazu Fuji, a physician; Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor's widow with three small children; Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German missionary priest; Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, and the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto are the six Hersey chose from dozens of people he interviewed. The book opens with what each person was doing moments before the blast and follows their next few hours, continuing through the next several days and then ending with their situation a year later.
In the opening chapter, "A Noiseless Flash" he gives short scenarios of what each was doing moments before the blast and immediately after. The second chapter, "The Fire," picks up with each victim as they begin to assess their surroundings. All face a different sort of horror as they realize their lives have been spared yet the world as they knew it is gone. "Details Are Being Investigated" is the title of the third chapter. As the title suggests, inhabitants of Hiroshima are being bombarded with rumors about the bomb and eagerly await any official word. Information is scarce and the phrase "details are being investigated" is repeated throughout the city over makeshift communications. This chapter is the longest and details what is happening to the six as the day passes into night. Some readers might be confused by the significance of the title of the fourth chapter: "Panic Grass and Feverfew." The effect the bomb had not only left the underground organs of plants intact but also had stimulated growth of the wild flowers and plants. Two of these plants that grew profusely around the scars of the city were panic grass and Feverfew. This chapter traces the effect of the nuclear radiation on the residents. Four of the six suffer from radiation sickness in varying degrees. This is the final chapter in the original book. Hersey concludes the stories with a report of where each victim is at this point in his or her life a year after the bomb had fallen. In his addition to the original text, the fifth chapter called the Aftermath, Hersey returns to interview the six survivors and see how their lives have been altered by the blast...