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Fate And Chance In Hiroshima, By John Hersey

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In the novel, Hiroshima by John Hersey, the importance of fate and chance is illustrated throughout the lives of the survivors from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945. There are several coincidental events that seem too fictional to be believed. The survivors of the bomb include Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works; Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a physician who owned a private hospital; Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor’s widow and a mother of three; Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German priest of the Society of Jesus; Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young surgeon of the city’s Red Cross Hospital; and The Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church. (p. 1-4) Out of the one hundred thousand people who perished because of the atomic bomb, these six people, and many more survived due to luck and chance. …show more content…

Miss Toshiko Sasaki turned her head to speak to a girl beside her desk. Frightened and fearful, she stayed fixed in position, until she lost consciousness when everything collapsed. (p.16) Walls and ceilings toppled over her and the bookcase pounced on her, leaving her with a “horribly twisted” left leg. Simultaneously, Dr. Masakazu Fujii sat down to read on his porch of the hospital. As he was reading the Osaka Asahi , he detected a “brilliant yellow flash” as his hospital collapsed into the river. (p. 11) Startled, he found himself compressed between two massive

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