Hiroshima The stories and events that unfold in John Hersey’s, Hiroshima, have certainly been eye-openers for me. As a child in middle school and high school I, we have all heard of the atomic bomb and of course of Hiroshima, but never in as much detail or on such a personal level as these stories. Not even in chemistry or physics class, where I learned some of the specifics as to how the bomb works, had I known of the destructive force of the bomb or it’s gruesome effects on human beings. As I mentioned before, this book was quite an eye-opener for me because it has taught me just how deadly nuclear weapons can be not only on material properties, but on human beings, and why nuclear weapons must never again be used is such a way. …show more content…
The first story of the book we hear is that of the Reverend Tanimoto. He is dropping off some goods at a friend’s house for safekeeping some 3,500 yards, or two miles, away from the center of the explosion and that house crumbles to the ground from the force of the blast. That seems so amazing to me because in such a huge city, most of the time, you cannot even see two miles away. It may be difficult for most people to appreciate the force of a bomb that can destroy something two miles away, but most airplane bombs only destroy things within about 100 yards. That would be everything within a football field completely wiped out, now imagine something that could level everything within 35 football fields!
The book also accounts just how much pressure the bomb exerted and how hot the bomb blast was according to scientists of the time. These were two other awesome statistics. The pressure of the blast was estimated to be somewhere between 5.3 to 8 tons per square yard. A yard is slightly larger than a person’s arm and most people cannot lift more than a hundred pounds on one arm. Imagine having over 10,000 pounds, or five tons, of pressure being exerted on your arms? It’s almost unbelievable. The heat given off by the blast is just as astonishing a number as the pressure. There was evidence that clay tiles, whose melting point is thirteen times hotter than that of the boiling point of water, had
The day that the bomb was dropped, it was described as a quiet early morning, and the people who had lived through it had described the bomb exploding as a bright flash in the sky. The characters in the story were described as calm and relaxed until the bomb had dropped. After the destruction was over the entire city was in fear of what had happened because they thought it was an everyday drill. The people of Hiroshima didn't know that the sirens were not a drill since they had drills every other
The author of the book, John Hersey, had a good purpose in telling so many individual anecdotes about the life before the bomb. He focused on expressing the stories of these survivors in a way in which the reader could see it from their point of view. His aim was to demonstrate that each individual was a real human being with real feelings just like us. The author seeks to make sure that readers understand that the bombings happened to people who had a daily life and were astonished by what had happened. Hersey demonstrates that the bombing impacted people who had previously been undergoing a lot in life.
Imagine the horror and sheer panic flashing through the minds of those unfortunate enough to be near the detonation site of a nuclear weapon. Those lucky enough to survive will be forced to face the devastating aftermath of a nuclear weapon, where all that is left of their former lives is ash and ruin. The short story, “Grace Period” by Will Baker tells a story about a man being utterly confused as he is unable to distinguish that a nuclear explosion has just occurred nearby. With the information from the article “Nuclear Weapon Effects” the man’s experiences in “Grace Period” begin to make sense and match the description of what transpires during a nuclear explosion. After reading both sources, it is clear that what he is experiencing is
John Hersey's journalist narrative, Hiroshima focuses on the detonation of the atomic bomb, Little Boy, that dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Although over one hundred thousand people died in the dropping of the bomb, there were also several survivors. John Hersey travelled to Hiroshima to listen to the experiences of six survivors. Hersey uses his book to tell the story of six of these survivors (spanning from the morning the bomb fell to forty years later) through a compilation of interviews. Hiroshima demonstrates the vast damage and suffering inflicted on the Japanese that resulted from US deployment of the atomic bomb. And although depressing, humbling, and terrifying, this book was very good, interesting, and
The book, Hiroshima, is the story of six individuals who experienced the true effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. Miss Toshinki Sasaki, a clerk in the East Asia Tin Works factory, just sat down in the plant office and was turning to converse with the girl at the next desk when the bomb exploded. Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a physician, was relaxing on his porch, which overlooked the Kyo River, where he was reading the morning periodical when the shell detonated. Before the eruption, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura was observing her neighbor destruct his house as part of a fire lane in preparation of an American attack. Previous to the attack, Father
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.
Mr. Tanimoto consciously repeated to himself “‘These are human beings’”(Hersey 1946), as he attempted to save paralyzed, dying men and women, in the book “Hiroshima” by John Hersey. This nonfiction book was published on August 31 1946, a year after the atomic bombing fell on Hiroshima, Japan. This publication was raw, uncensored, and truthful. John Hersey unapologetically revealed the gruesome damages done by the bombing, while also silencing those who believed that the atomic bomb was a justified attack. Hersey’s brilliant journalism and ability to write this story without bias, is why this book was selected. The author did not want those who died to be remembered as casualties, but as mothers, fathers and children. Hersey wrote this book about the the physical, and psychological impact this bomb had on both survivors and victims of the atomic bomb. There were many historical events that contributed to the cause and effect of the atomic attack; historical events such as industrialization, the trench wars, and militarism. This was not just a simple bomb, but a complex attack on humanity.
Wilfred Burchett, an Australian journalist who visited Hiroshima just a month after the Hiroshima bombing. He provides evidence that he did not approve of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For example he stated that he saw people in hospitals dying mysteriously, ‘they lost their appetites, their hair fell out . . their flesh began rotting away from their bones.’ (Direct quote from source A). He also stated that ‘thousands of people came out of their shelters to watch the bomb descend by parachute’ they didn’t realise what was to come next.
Throughout the rest of the museum you continue to see what workers like Ricks and others who survived saw after the explosion. “When you see displays of persons personal effects and personal things they recovered from the rubble... You see a pair of little kid’s shoes that are burned or melted, whether the kid was in them or not- we don’t know for sure- there was a defenseless little kid… whose parents worked at the building or near the building and there was this gigantic blast that goes off” (Lemke). The blast was huge. “One thing that stuck in my mind was how big the crater was in the street that the bomb blast created… It blew a 30 foot deep hole… It basically wiped out a third of the building” (Lemke). It took a lot of people and time to go through the large amount of rubble. An entire section is dedicated to workers who helped in
Of those in the book distraught by the massive explosion, the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto seemed to be the one person most effected mentally and emotionally by the horrific sights and sounds of the turmoil. Mr. Tanimoto seemed, to himself, to be the one person not physically harmed by the blast, causing a great deal remorse, self-loathing, and shame for having been unharmed. During the aftermath of
A conventional bomb would have destroyed only the wooden structures within a 40 meters radius, but the atomic bomb that smashed Hiroshima was able to affect everything within a radius of 2 kilometers of the point of explosion. Altogether an area of 13 square kilometers was reduced to ashes and 80% of the 76,000
The both long term and short term effects of the bomb are ever present and well known today the severe immediate effects and the forever lasting effects of such a bomb is quite apparent as heresy describes in this paragraph the immediate effects will be discussedThe Immediate affects were loss of hair , severe bleeding , intense burns. Father Scheiffer has a severe head which requires him to receive immediate medical attention. As Miss Saski was trapped under the bookcase she believed her leg was blown off but was actually just severely broken and was eventually rescued after hours and put into a refugee camp. They eventually settled in the surprisingly intact park where they stayed and drank from the river to quench their undying thirst even though this water made the vomit for days most likely from the radiation. Eventually the fires from the bomb were coming alarmingly close to the park and Mr. Tanimoto along with Father Kleinsorge and volunteers attempted to put it out with clothes and water. Later that day after they put out
When the atomic bombs detonated above Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it shocked the world with disbelief and hardship. They knew that those bombs would change the course of warfare forever. An author named Steve Sheinkin, describes these events, as well as the events leading up to them. He describes the bombs, the work inside of the Manhattan Project, and the race to build the atomic bomb overseas with the Germans. His purpose inside of this book is to give the readers a clear understanding of the world’s first atomic bombs. The audience that the author is writing to, is mainly Americans, who did not get the inside look of the making of the atomic bombs. He is also writing it to anybody else who’s country was part of the war. This gives the readers
Resulting in catastrophic damages that wiped out more than 5,000 meters past the targeted area, the atomic bomb was described by one source who explains that the bomb exploding was more than just an explosion, “The atomic bomb exploded, a super-hot fireball was generated while expanding the surrounding air with ferocious power, a wall of air spread faster than sound, the air behind this wall was a blast, as the blast spread, the air pressure near the hypocenter plummeted from high to low in an instant (creating negative pressure), the air blowing out from the hypocenter reversed direction; wind swept back in toward the center with tremendous force, negative pressure worsened the damage caused by the blast” (Hiroshima). At the end of this blast, approximately 30 minutes later, a black rain that was
President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the direct cause for the end of World War II in the Pacific. The United States felt it was necessary to drop the atomic bombs on these two cities or it would suffer more casualties. Not only could the lives of many soldiers have been taken, but possibly the lives of many innocent Americans. The United States will always try to avoid the loss of American civilians at all costs, even if that means taking lives of another countries innocent civilians.