Hiroshima

In the first paragraphs of his book on Hiroshima, Hersey sketches out the format of his work: by examining the lives of six ordinary people living in Hiroshima on the day of the explosion, Hersey will paint a vivid picture of what it must have been like in the city on August 6, 1945. At the time, Hersey’s method of reporting on Hiroshima was almost unprecedented: journalists tended to report on major events like the bombing using a more removed, objective style of writing.

It’s worth thinking a little more closely about how Hersey came to interview these six survivors of Hiroshima, and what forms of bias his reporting might reflect. To begin with, any book on Hiroshima that’s structured around the accounts of survivors is, almost by definition, going to be a more optimistic account of the disaster than what truly happened. The Hiroshima bombing was the story of one hundred thousand people who died; Hiroshima is, at its most literal level, the story of six people who survived. Second, there’s an important selection bias in Hersey’s journalistic project. For fairly obvious reasons, the six people whom Hersey was able to contact and write about were significantly more 1) cooperative, 2) morally minded, 3) sympathetic to the United States, and 4) familiar with Western culture than the average Hiroshima resident. (For example, it’s no coincidence that two of the six main characters are Christian priests—a Christian priest is exactly the kind of person who would have been likely to agree to talk to an American reporter less than a year after the bombing.) Hersey does a brilliant job of connecting the disparate experiences of his six main characters to the overall event of the Hiroshima bombing; however, it’s crucial to understand the forms of bias that might paint a misleading picture of what the Hiroshima bombing was really like.

In the seconds following the detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Hatsuyo Nakamura felt an immediate, maternal instinct to protect her children. Watching from the window of her house, she saw a bright light flash through the sky, and then she turned to guard her children from danger. The passage sets the tone for the following three chapters of the book: by and large, the six main characters in Hiroshima are remarkably compassionate and selfless; they feel a strong instinct to take care of other people, whether those other people are their church congregants, their children, or their medical patients.

This passage is also a great example of Hersey’s unique approach to writing about the Hiroshima explosion. Instead of providing an omniscient, birds-eye view of the event, Hersey relates what happened through the eyes of the different characters. One strength of this strategy is that it gives a sense of the chaos and confusion in the moments after the bombing. An important weakness of this strategy, however, is that it limits readers’ knowledge of the bombing to the information that six eyewitnesses would have been able to learn.

In this passage, Hersey conveys some of the characters’ responses to the politics and ethics of the Hiroshima bombing. Some of the characters treat the Hiroshima bombing as an elemental tragedy, almost like a natural disaster. Others blame the United States government for the bombing, and demand that the leaders responsible be tried for war crimes. Still others adopt a stoic acceptance of the disaster—rather than dwell on blame, they try to move forward with their lives.

Historians, journalists, and literary critics have debated the passage’s depiction of the Japanese response to the Hiroshima bombing. To begin with, Hersey makes it clear that there was no single response to the bombing—different Japanese citizens had vastly different opinions about it. Some critics have praised Hersey for having the courage to raise the possibility that the Hiroshima bombing was a war crime—especially considering that, in 1946, the vast majority of Americans believed that the bombing was morally justified. Other critics and historians have suggested that the actual reaction to the Hiroshima bombing was much less contentious than Hersey suggests here—the vast majority of Japanese citizens took the position that the United States had committed an unforgivable crime (whereas here, it’s just one character out of six, Dr. Sasaki, who says so). The passage is another good example of the selection bias inherent to Hersey’s journalistic project: the survivors who’d be willing to cooperate with an American journalist in 1946 are probably more likely to have a neutral or friendly attitude toward the United States than the Japanese population overall.

In the final chapter of the book, written forty years after the bombing, Hersey shows how the six main characters from his original article tried to move on with their lives. First, he writes about Mrs. Nakamura. Hersey suggests that Mrs. Nakamura tried to “make peace” with the memory of Hiroshima by accepting the bombing as a kind of natural disaster, like an earthquake or a hurricane.

Throughout the chapter, Hersey suggests that the survivors of Hiroshima managed to live relatively happy, fulfilling lives because they found ways of coming to terms with their rage, confusion, and guilt about Hiroshima. Put another way, the six main characters in Hiroshima all find ways of answering two questions: 1) “Why did the bombing happen?” and 2) “Why did I survive?” Instead of dwelling on the political implications of the attack, Nakamura seems to treat it as an inevitability. Furthermore, she seems to decide that she was caught in the bombing for the same reason that she survived it—luck, pure and simple.

In the first paragraphs of his book on Hiroshima, Hersey sketches out the format of his work: by examining the lives of six ordinary people living in Hiroshima on the day of the explosion, Hersey will paint a vivid picture of what it must have been like in the city on August 6, 1945. At the time, Hersey’s method of reporting on Hiroshima was almost unprecedented: journalists tended to report on major events like the bombing using a more removed, objective style of writing.

It’s worth thinking a little more closely about how Hersey came to interview these six survivors of Hiroshima, and what forms of bias his reporting might reflect. To begin with, any book on Hiroshima that’s structured around the accounts of survivors is, almost by definition, going to be a more optimistic account of the disaster than what truly happened. The Hiroshima bombing was the story of one hundred thousand people who died; Hiroshima is, at its most literal level, the story of six people who survived. Second, there’s an important selection bias in Hersey’s journalistic project. For fairly obvious reasons, the six people whom Hersey was able to contact and write about were significantly more 1) cooperative, 2) morally minded, 3) sympathetic to the United States, and 4) familiar with Western culture than the average Hiroshima resident. (For example, it’s no coincidence that two of the six main characters are Christian priests—a Christian priest is exactly the kind of person who would have been likely to agree to talk to an American reporter less than a year after the bombing.) Hersey does a brilliant job of connecting the disparate experiences of his six main characters to the overall event of the Hiroshima bombing; however, it’s crucial to understand the forms of bias that might paint a misleading picture of what the Hiroshima bombing was really like.

In the seconds following the detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Hatsuyo Nakamura felt an immediate, maternal instinct to protect her children. Watching from the window of her house, she saw a bright light flash through the sky, and then she turned to guard her children from danger. The passage sets the tone for the following three chapters of the book: by and large, the six main characters in Hiroshima are remarkably compassionate and selfless; they feel a strong instinct to take care of other people, whether those other people are their church congregants, their children, or their medical patients.

This passage is also a great example of Hersey’s unique approach to writing about the Hiroshima explosion. Instead of providing an omniscient, birds-eye view of the event, Hersey relates what happened through the eyes of the different characters. One strength of this strategy is that it gives a sense of the chaos and confusion in the moments after the bombing. An important weakness of this strategy, however, is that it limits readers’ knowledge of the bombing to the information that six eyewitnesses would have been able to learn.

In this passage, Hersey conveys some of the characters’ responses to the politics and ethics of the Hiroshima bombing. Some of the characters treat the Hiroshima bombing as an elemental tragedy, almost like a natural disaster. Others blame the United States government for the bombing, and demand that the leaders responsible be tried for war crimes. Still others adopt a stoic acceptance of the disaster—rather than dwell on blame, they try to move forward with their lives.

Historians, journalists, and literary critics have debated the passage’s depiction of the Japanese response to the Hiroshima bombing. To begin with, Hersey makes it clear that there was no single response to the bombing—different Japanese citizens had vastly different opinions about it. Some critics have praised Hersey for having the courage to raise the possibility that the Hiroshima bombing was a war crime—especially considering that, in 1946, the vast majority of Americans believed that the bombing was morally justified. Other critics and historians have suggested that the actual reaction to the Hiroshima bombing was much less contentious than Hersey suggests here—the vast majority of Japanese citizens took the position that the United States had committed an unforgivable crime (whereas here, it’s just one character out of six, Dr. Sasaki, who says so). The passage is another good example of the selection bias inherent to Hersey’s journalistic project: the survivors who’d be willing to cooperate with an American journalist in 1946 are probably more likely to have a neutral or friendly attitude toward the United States than the Japanese population overall.

In the final chapter of the book, written forty years after the bombing, Hersey shows how the six main characters from his original article tried to move on with their lives. First, he writes about Mrs. Nakamura. Hersey suggests that Mrs. Nakamura tried to “make peace” with the memory of Hiroshima by accepting the bombing as a kind of natural disaster, like an earthquake or a hurricane.

Throughout the chapter, Hersey suggests that the survivors of Hiroshima managed to live relatively happy, fulfilling lives because they found ways of coming to terms with their rage, confusion, and guilt about Hiroshima. Put another way, the six main characters in Hiroshima all find ways of answering two questions: 1) “Why did the bombing happen?” and 2) “Why did I survive?” Instead of dwelling on the political implications of the attack, Nakamura seems to treat it as an inevitability. Furthermore, she seems to decide that she was caught in the bombing for the same reason that she survived it—luck, pure and simple.