The Rebirth of a Few: Depicting Suffering and Endurance in 'Hiroshima' Anonymous 11th Grade

The atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima turned a once prosperous city into a flattened hellscape of flame and rubble. Buildings were leveled, structures were vaporized, and lives were erased in an instant. Those fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to survive had to struggle desperately. Aid was severely limited, and the wounded count was increasing by the hour. Each passing second was met with a life being extinguished, and the mettle of survivors was being tested continuously. John Hersey’s nonfiction account Hiroshima tells the story of six survivors of the bombing and its aftermath. All of these survivors face immense hardship that transforms their character into their true selves, and in his epilogue chapter written nearly forty years after the novel’s original publication, Hersey returns to interview these survivors once more. Of the two, Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto and Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura face their own personal hardships of duty, family, and morality.

Mr. Tanimoto is introduced as being a local Methodist pastor who has a strong sense of duty to his community. He is far enough from the initial blast zone to not be instantly killed, and his sense of duty is first recognized in his urge to run to the city to...