Customer Reviews:
Most boring book I have ever read
This review may annoy people who feel strongly about the book or the incident, but Hiroshima really is the driest read imaginable. I had to teach it to an extension English class and when the time came to discussing the text, all 24 students owned up to not reading it because it bored them senseless. I couldn't feel angry about that because I too found it so dull that I struggled to get through it. I ended up supplementing it with other non-fiction texts. Three successive classes have all proclaimed it the most "boring" book they have ever been asked to read for English. This review is more for teachers pondering using it as a study text. Don't! Your students will thank you for it.

An intimate look at the innocent victims of total war
Hard not to feel nostalgic for days when war was waged by warriors. A certain civility in that. Rules of engagement. Codes of honor. You think of Greeks, and Samurai, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade;" of French and German soldiers who meet in No Man's Land to share Christmas treats then return to opposing trenches.

But then here comes Nanking, Stalingrad, London, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. Total war, as the phrase goes. A reversion to tribal days, perhaps, when warring foes fell men, women, and children alike, to void vengeance. A weapon now to instill dread, to sap the will, to raise the costs of conflict.

Hiroshima: August 6, 1945, 8:15 a.m. That's when John Hersey`s story begins, with "a noiseless flash." It begins not in the White House, nor in the Imperial Palace or the B-29 that dropped the bomb. But in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, where Toshiko has just turned to speak to a co-worker. In the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital, where Dr. Sasaki walks down the corridor, a blood specimen in hand. In the minds of six who survived, at a half dozen points across the city, at the instant the atomic bomb exploded.

Here Hersey does not pontificate, excuse, blame, or rage. He reports. With meticulous detail, in short, clear, declarative sentences, with controlled understatement. To describe a human experience so beyond words and thought that it can be grasped only through the senses.

So, through the eyes and ears of these six hibakusha, literally, "explosion-affected persons," we see the scarred multitudes fleeing the fires, hear the shocked silence of the radiated dying, feel the flames, and smell the putrefying flesh. Working like a novelist, Hersey puts us there, scene upon scene, with dialogue and pertinent detail, to show the reality on a human scale. Not commenting, but showing:

"The hurt ones were quiet; no one wept, much less screamed in pain; no one complained; none of the many who died did so noisily; not even the children cried; very few people even spoke."

And:

"Mr. Tanimoto found about twenty men and women on the sandspit. He drove the boat onto the bank and urged them to get aboard. They did not move and he realized they were too weak to lift themselves. He reached down and took a woman by the hands, but her skin slipped off in huge, glovelike pieces."

Or:

"He saw a uniform. Thinking there was just one soldier, he approached with the water. When he had penetrated the bushes he saw there were about twenty men, and they were all in exactly the same nightmarish state: their faces were wholly burned, their eyesockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks."

And:

"She kept the small corpse in her arms for four days, even though it started smelling bad on the second day."

Though a Yale and Cambridge educated journalist, novelist, and Pulitzer Prize winner, Hersey uses simple words, simple sentences, and a direct, conversational tone to tell a story that would dwarf any language. He gives the numbers: 6,000 degrees centigrade; 70,000 of 90,000 buildings destroyed; 100,000 killed, another 100,000 hurt in a city of 245,000. But cold facts, Hersey realizes, cannot encompass the horror. Only by reliving the day and its aftermath through the eyes, ears, and words of those who experienced it can we approach it. Simply and hauntingly, Hersey places us at ground zero, with austere language that vibrates with intensity:

"They told her that her mother, father, and baby brother...had all been given up as certainly dead...Her friends then left her to think that piece of news over. Later, some men picked her up by the arms and legs and carried her quite a distance to a truck. For about an hour, the truck moved over a bumpy road, and Miss Sasaki, who had become convinced that she was dulled to pain, discovered that she was not."

A year later, the August 31, 1946 edition of The New Yorker devoted all its space to Hersey's Hiroshima. Newspapers worldwide reprinted it; it was read aloud over radio. Since then it has, for good reason, become a classic of American nonfiction.

In its final chapter, Hersey quotes a Hiroshima priest who had been away from his mission house the morning of the attack:

"It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians. The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us a clear answer to this question?"

Some 65 years later, while some still await an answer, Hersey's Hiroshima still breathes a clear reply.

The atomic bomb was not the prettiest part of the war
This novel is the best, accurate, and historical record of the people of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb hit in 1945. The entire town was left in ruins, and the people had to do all the could to make it out and survive. It was the most horrible moment for Japan, and thousands died, and even more were left sick or died for radiation poisoning. It also makes you wonder, is this worth the cost of victory? I give credit to this author for gathering these historically accurate summaries of a good variety of survivors of the bombing, as well as returning decades later to conclude his biographies of these brave survivors. The novel is not a pretty one, but shows how pushing one button can change the lives of thousands of people in a matter of seconds. Its sad seeing what these people went for, as well as sad how some of these survivors ended up dying. This is an emotional book, and shows a Japan's point of view after the bombing, which many Americans weren't aware of the full extent these people suffered.

A silent explosion (3.5 stars)
First published in 1946, this simple little book recounts the experiences of six civilian inhabitants of Hiroshima who survived the atomic blast on April 6, 1945. Few residents recall hearing any sound from the explosion, just the bright flash and the shock wave. Even those who died soon after most often did so in silence. The book tells what those 6 were doing that morning, what happened when the atomic bomb exploded, and how they coped in the hours, days, weeks and months that followed. The final chapter returns 40 years later to follow up on the rest of their lives.

I've heard rave and almost reverential recommendations of this book and wondered if my thoughts would be changed by reading it. The text is mostly straightforward and seemingly neutral in its judgment; it reports that most Hiroshimans did not blame the US for the bomb, they just wanted to get on with their lives as best they could. It is not until the very end that it seems to take on an agenda, and while I found the initial part of the book fascinating and compelling, the follow-up chapter was disappointing. It isn't especially graphic or horrific in its account, but does portray what ordinary Japanese experienced, and made me feel grateful that such weapons have not been used since 1945.

I think this is a worthwhile book for anyone interested in the topic to read. But I would urge you *not* to read with the intent to fortify your views either way - the book's focus is much too narrow for such - but to read it for the history and human experience it reports.

Confusing and Boring
I read this book as a 10th grade student. The book may have been the most confusing book I have ever read. The book has 7 different accounts and each one is short and almost pointless. If Hershey only used 4 characters and went into each person's account deeper, it would have been much more interesting. Could not wait to finish this book... not for good reasons though.

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