I just finished reading John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Hiroshima is the account of six survivors of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, Japan: Miss Sasaki, a clerk; Dr. Fujii, a private practitioner; Mrs. Nakamura, a tailor’s widow; Father Kleinsorge, a German priest of the Society of Jesus; Dr. Sasaki, a surgeon; and Reverend Tanimoto, a Methodist minister.
This book (which I recently learned is actually an article that appeared in The New Yorker) is stunning. At first I was taken aback by the flat tone of the writing, but was quickly drawn into the report because of it. The absolute horror of the atomic bombing is sandwiched between the normalcy of the six survivors’ early morning on August 6th, 1945 and the rebuilt lives after the bombing. The matter-of-fact report of the Hiroshima bombing is a must-read.
Anything more that I write would be trite. This book speaks for itself.
-Tiff