Hiroshima

Content Warning: The source text contains graphic descriptions of the injuries and illness caused by the bombing of Hiroshima. Some of these descriptions are presented in this section to reflect the book’s content and intent.

Hersey set out to document and convey the horrors of the atomic bomb. He doesn’t do this by matching the enormity of the horror with purple, hyperbolic prose or reams of statistics. Rather, he focuses on the minutiae of individual life stories. He lets the facts of nuclear weapons and of individual experiences speak for themselves.

The nuclear bomb was brand new in 1945. It had never been used prior to Hiroshima, and the United States was the only country to possess one. People knew next to nothing about it. Publication of Hersey’s article—and shortly thereafter, his book—came just the following year. The U.S. government had kept a tight lid on the bomb and its effects, and many people first learned of them through Hersey’s work. Included in the original article, but not in the book, is an editor’s note. It explained that the entire issue of The New Yorker was devoted to the topic “in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use. (Hersey, John. “Hiroshima,” The New Yorker, 31 Aug. 1946, p. 15.)

Hersey knew that people are drawn to stories—not statistics. By telling the stories of six individuals, he aimed to create a sense of connection and let the details speak for themselves. There are numerous mentions of terrible burns, uncontrollable vomiting, and keloid tumors. In Chapter 3, Rev. Tanimoto tried to help a group of victims out of the rising river and into the small boat that he was piloting. He reached out to help one of the women, grasping her hands, “but her skin slipped off in huge, glovelike pieces” (45). Tanimoto, Hersey writes, was momentarily shaken and had to collect himself. The specificity of this image and others in the book supersedes any broad statements about how many tens of thousands of people died or the power of the bomb in terms of dynamite.

Hersey’s approach also lets him dole out information in the telling that matched how it was learned at the time. Readers discover only what the survivors knew the day of the bombing, then the week after it, then in the months that followed. This allows them to feel the confusion that survivors felt and to wonder about the numerous rumors, some more outlandish than others, that tried explaining the new weapon. Instead of summarizing the bomb’s effects in a paragraph or two, Hersey explores the medical ailments that lasted over a lifetime, causing pain, mental anguish, diminished physical capabilities, and—in many cases—poverty.