For whenever you have a couple of hours:
Pulitzer awarded John Hersey follows the fate of six survivors
and describes their experiences. At the beginning, people from Hiroshima believed that the US covered the city with gun powered and set it on fire. That would have been the least worse of all scenarios, and could not explain the silent blast, the blinding light, and the burns resulted afterwords.
The six survivors:
Miss Toshiko
Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works;
Dr. Masakazy Fuji - a prosperous doctor running a private hospital
Father Wilherlm Kleinsorge, a German priest of the
Society of Jesus,
Rev. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima
Methodist Church,
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki,
A young doctor at the Red Cross hospital was 1650 yards from the center of the explosion
Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakimura, a tailor's widow and her
three children.
"He
was the only person making his way into the city; he met hundreds
and hundreds who were fleeing, and every one of them seemed to be
hurt in some way. The eyebrows of some were burned off and skin
hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain, held their
arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting
as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed
bodies, the burns had made patterns—of undershirt straps and suspenders
and, on the skin of some women (since white repelled the heat from
the bomb and dark clothes absorbed it and conducted it to the skin),
the shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos. Many, although
injured themselves, supported relatives who were worse off. Almost
all had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and
showed no expression whatsoever."
The story first appeared on Aug 31, 1946 in the New Yorker after serious debates; it took the entire issue and it was something never done by the magazine. The reaction was overwhelming. Newsstands could not keep copies of the New Yorker on their shelves. All over the world newspapers asked for the rights to print the story. Albert Einstein ordered 1,000 copies. The ABC broadcasting
system read it on hundreds of its stations.
Modern editions like this finish with The Aftermath, the final chapter written forty years after the original article.Hersey returned
to Japan to discover what happened to the six people he originally
interviewed in the ensuing years. Amazing journalism.
