Hersey's 'Hiroshima' haunts and heals

On Aug. 6, 1945, a great flash lit up the sky over the Japanese seaside city of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m., forever changing the lives of 245,000 human beings.

In his acclaimed book Hiroshima, journalist John Hersey braids together the stories of six individuals who witnessed the world’s first atomic bomb, which (according to his narrative) erupted in an excess of 6000 degrees Celsius over Hiroshima. Formed from three weeks of Hersey’s interviews in Japan in April 1946, Hiroshima depicts the morning of the tragedy in the eyes of these six survivors, details the first several days after and then presents a streamlined account of the following stages of their lives.

 The material for Hiroshima, dubbed the “No. 1 work of journalism” in the 20th century by New York University, originally met the public as an article printed with the same title in The New Yorker’s Aug. 31, 1946 issue. Hersey originally planned to release his story as a four-part series of articles, but The New Yorker chose to devote the entire editorial section of the issue to the 31,000-word work of reporting brilliance following the first anniversary of the bomb’s fall. The editorial staff of The New Yorker explained the reasoning for their unprecedented (and unrepeated) decision at the bottom of page 15: “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.”

The initial publication of the piece quickly sold out, warranting numerous requests for more copies (with 1,000 ordered by Albert Einstein). That fall, Hiroshima showed up in homes across America as a book, eventually selling 3.5 million copies, in several editions. Many readers applauded Hersey’s work, but a few, including the American occupational government in Japan, discouraged Hiroshima’s circulation. In contrast to the cheers booming from the Allies’ celebratory activities, the voices of five natives of Japan and a German resident arose from the (literal) ashes to tell what they saw, felt and thought in such a key moment in modern history. 

Returning to the subject 40 years later, Hersey developed an extensive postscript to Hiroshima (“The Aftermath”), which hit the press once again, first in The New Yorker as an article and soon after, in a revision of the book. With four decades of life to cover for the same six survivors, Hersey picked his material wisely, articulating the updated stories of each person.

Hersey’s account of what happened in Hiroshima at the height of WWII impartially challenged, or perhaps confronted, the stigma held by the majority of Americans against the Japanese. During a decade of extreme distrust in the minds of both the Allies and the Axis, Hersey took the opportunity as a journalist to shed light on the repercussions of nuclear power and the United States’ willingness to exploit it. In the words of John Toland, who wrote the 1985 New York Times review of Hiroshima with a new postscript, American propaganda fed the flames of hostility and disregard for the Japanese “brutes,” whose leaders were deemed “as evil as the Nazis.” In that national environment, Hersey released a beacon of significantly objective reporting that illustrated the tangible humanity of the Japanese in Hiroshima — during a manifestly inhuman incident.

All throughout Hiroshima, Hersey’s style stays straightforward and reserved. The descriptive details of personal and widespread turmoil take the place of emotional language; the raw emotion from the stories of the hibakusha (literally, “explosion-affected persons”) springs from the narrative through their words and actions. Hersey’s restrained nature in Hiroshima supports the credibility of his accounts. No clear agenda appears in the book, other than to recount the happenings of Aug. 6, 1945 and their aftereffects. 

Hersey gives his readers such precise details in the book that practically each scene comes alive with personality. Starting with the first survivor’s account, the author describes the Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto as “a small man, quick to talk, laugh, and cry,” with long hair parted in the middle and an “old-young look, boyish yet wise, weak and yet fiery.” Hersey draws character sketches of the others as well: an East Asia Tin Works clerk named Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a private and well-to-do physician called Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a tailor’s widow and mother of three known as Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a Jesuit priest from Germany named Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge and a young surgeon in Hiroshima’s Red Cross Hospital called Dr. Terufumi Sasaki. 

Hersey weaves his narrative effortlessly together, alternating between the six individuals and their experiences. Although distinct events — whether in the story of one person or in that of several different people — each links to one another in subtle ways. A few of these six hibakusha knew each other and ended up crossing paths for smaller or longer segments in the story. For the rest who remained unaware of the plight of the others highlighted by Hersey, the common currency of time, date and location sustain a logical progression in the book’s flow. At times, the sequence of stories leaves the reader hanging, in expectation for what will happen next. For instance, in the third chapter (“Details Are Being Investigated”), Hersey writes of Miss Sasaki, whose leg was presently debilitating and swollen, making her dependent on the help of others for survival. The section about Miss Sasaki ends with her in the hospital: “But then the doctor took her temperature, and what he saw on the thermometer made him decide to let her stay.”

Although born in Tientsin, China and raised in the U.S., Hersey provides a well-informed, fairly detached view of the Japanese in Hiroshima. He includes an appropriate amount of Japanese words and phrases in the story, maintaining a smooth flow in his English description while adding cultural uniqueness with Japanese diction. After introducing a certain italicized term or title, such as hibakusha and Nakamura-san, Hersey then replaces subsequent appearances of the concept with the Japanese and leaves the word in regular font — thereby establishing for the readers an increasing degree of familiarity with the Hiroshimans.

All the time and energy Hersey put into Hiroshima paid off. According to “The Publication of ‘Hiroshima’ in The New Yorker” by Steve Rothman, near the beginning of 1946, then managing editor of The New Yorker William Shawn dialogued with Hersey about writing something that would express the down-to-earth reality of the A-bomb’s effects in Hiroshima. In May, Hersey began his three-week-long process of investigation, first researching and conducting interviews in Tokyo and then going to Hiroshima to meet the hibakusha. Back again in the States in June, Hersey wrote the article over the course of several weeks. As David Sanders writes in his book John Hersey, early on Hersey chose to focus on six individuals simply “because they had been good interview subjects,” not for their likelihood of dramatizing the story (for some had been as close as 1,350 yards from the center of the blast).

With this phenomenal book, Hersey opens up a unique window into the history of our world. Hiroshima boasts priceless information derived from six Japanese citizens who lived through one of the most troubling moments in their country’s existence. Hersey’s journalistic grace and frank delivery serves as an excellent voice box for each of the individuals highlighted in this story. In Hersey’s obituary published in The New Yorker on April 5, 1993, Hendrik Hertzberg lauds Hersey’s work in Hiroshima. Considering the bombing of Hiroshima a subject extremely likely to elicit a superfluity of writing, Hertzberg asserts that Hersey’s meticulous reporting and clear-cut organization acted as the frame in which “the horror of the story he had to tell came through all the more chillingly.”