Summary
The beginning of the chapter introduces readers to its six principal subjects by stating where they were when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The first is Miss Toshiko Sasaki, who had just sat down at her place as a clerk in the personnel department of East Asia Tin Works. The next is Dr. Masaku Fujii, who was settling down to read on the porch of his private hospital. Then Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor's widow, who was standing beside her kitchen window, watching her neighbor tearing down his house. Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German Jesuit priest, was reclining on a cot in his mission house. Dr. Terfumi Sasaki (not related to Miss Sasaki) was walking through the corridors of the Red Cross Hospital where he worked. Finally, Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, was unloading a handcart of things he had evacuated from the city for fear of an air raid.
Though one-hundred-thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, these six survived, and each credits a series of small decisions—deciding to go indoors, catching one street car instead of the next, etc.—as the things that somehow spared them.
Mr. Tanimoto wakes up alone that morning, because his wife has been commuting with their three-year-old baby to spend nights at a friend's in a suburb called Ushida, because Mr. Tanimoto is extremely anxious that Hiroshima will be targeted for a B-29 air raid soon. Mr. Tanimoto himself is moving important items from his church out of the city, where they will be safer in the event of a raid. He and his friend Mr. Matsuo have a reciprocal agreement to help each other haul out their larger items. Tanimoto is anxious: he studied at Emory College in the United States, and because he speaks perfect English and wears American clothes, some have accused him of being a spy.
As Tanimoto and Matsuo are moving a large Japanese cabinet, there is a tremendous flash of light across the sky. They throw themselves under cover, and Tanimoto feels the house collapse from his sheltered place in the garden. He thinks a bomb has fallen directly on the house.
The night before the bombing, Hiroshima's radio station warns of two-hundred B-29s approaching the province, and tells citizens to evacuate to their designated safe areas. At the first warning, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura takes her three young children and does exactly that; however, after she returns home and the next warning comes, she decides that this time, because she has made so many trips for false alarms, she will allow the children to stay in their home and sleep. Mrs. Nakamura has not had an easy time, as her husband joined the army and died in Singapore just after their youngest child, Myeko, was born. Since then, she has meagerly supported her children by sewing.
Mrs. Nakamura is inside her house when the flash comes, and she immediately runs for her children. As the house crumbles, her children are trapped under debris, and she struggles to reach them.
Dr. Masakazu Fujii owns a private, single-doctor hospital on the banks of the Kyo River, which can fit thirty patients and their families. He has been idle lately, since he has turned many patients away out of fear that, should Hiroshima be bombed, he would not be able to evacuate them in case of fire. He is on the porch of his hospital reading the Osaka news when the flash comes, and, with a terrible ripping noise, his entire hospital is shaken apart into the river. He topples along with it.
Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge is having a tough time when the bombing comes, undernourished because of Japanese wartime rationing and wary of being a foreigner in Japan, even though he is technically a German ally. He is stretched out on a cot in his mission house when the bomb hits, and somehow he gets himself outside and sees that the mission house, heavily braced by a priest who was terrified of earthquakes, is the only building in the area left standing.
Dr. Terufumi Sasaki is heading into Hiroshima from his home in the country, on his way to work at the Red Cross Hospital. He is twenty-five years old and, having recently completed his training at a medical university in China, has become distressed by the state of medical care in the country town where he lives. On top of his long commute and his work at the Red Cross Hospital, he has begun secretly treating sick people in his home town in the evenings. He cannot decide whether or not to give up this work.
He is in the hospital walking to the laboratory with a blood test specimen when the flash comes, and he throws himself to the ground. When the initial shock is over, he is mostly unhurt, but the rest of the hospital is in bad condition, with many patients dead and doctors injured. Dr. Sasaki initially thinks that the enemy specifically targeted his building, but as he is begins to treat people, more and more injured citizens are beginning their trek toward the Red Cross Hospital.
Miss Toshiko Sasaki, the East Asia Tin Works clerk, gets up early that morning to begin housework, and eventually commutes to her work at the factory. She is far from the windows when the bomb hits; everything in the room falls, and the floor of the upstairs level caves in. Miss Sasaki loses consciousness; when she comes to, she finds herself crushed under the bookcases that had fallen.
Analysis
Hersey's choice to investigate Hiroshima survivors in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing is extremely significant, and it had a huge impact on American readers. As is true of all wars, World War II created a profound "us vs. them" mentality, with Americans encouraged to hate and distrust all Japanese, Germans, and other nationals and descendants of the Axis powers. It is important, however, to remember that behind hostile governments and belligerent armies lie normal citizens: innocent and equally—often, more so—affected by the horrors of war as any American was. By telling the stories of a few of these citizens, Hersey creates a way for his readers to sympathize with the "enemy" and understand the ordeal these people went through, which would hopefully discourage such atrocities in the future. Hersey illustrates an important truth: there are many sides to every story.
John Hersey is credited as one of the pioneers of "New Journalism," which is a journalistic style that uses literary techniques to report a nonfiction story, rather than the straightforward style of reporting facts dryly and simply that was more typical of journalism before this. Hiroshima reads like prose, though it is a piece of truthful journalism. New Journalism is an effective style for two reasons: first, because it is engaging for readers and seizes their attention, and second, because it colors life into its subjects, animating them in the midst of their experiences. New Journalism may be less objective than traditional journalism, but this is because the lived experiences of these people are not objective: the feelings and thoughts that accompanied these experiences are a necessary part of the story.
Rather than focus on merely one subject, Hersey chooses to tell six different stories. The survivors he focuses on are all extremely different: they are different ages, different genders, and hail from different walks of life. He even investigates Father Wilhelm, a foreigner living in Japan at a time when foreigners were largely distrusted. This allows readers to feel as if they are experiencing the bombing from multiple perspectives as it hits and the citizens of Hiroshima deal with its aftermath. The single most important thing these six people have in common is that, against all odds, they survived.
Hersey spends much of the first chapter humanizing the victims, painting them as normal people with cares and concerns that are familiar to readers. Mrs. Nakamura is a woman with children, whose first instinct when the bomb hits is to protect them as any mother would. Dr. Fujii and Dr. Sasaki are both physicians, who have dedicated their careers to helping others, and Dr. Sasaki even does so beyond his own working hours in his home town. Miss Sasaki is a young, hardworking woman, and Father Wilhelm and Mr. Tanimoto are religious, faithful people. All of these roles are relatable to readers and worthy of sympathy.
As the disaster begins to unfold, it is important to remember that, in 1945, the average person did not even know what an atomic bomb was, let alone what it would look like when it was used. The development of the atomic bomb in the United States was highly secretive. Thus, the people of Hiroshima do not understand this thing that has just so terribly shaken up their lives. Part of the terror the they experienced is not knowing what happened to them: they all come up with different interpretations, but none seems strong enough to explain the magnitude of the attack and subsequent suffering.
