Summary
On the evening of the bombing, a naval unit moves slowly up and down the rivers of Hiroshima, telling citizens that a hospital ship will soon be there to take care of them. The many injured people settle miserably down for the night in Asano Park, including Mrs. Nakamura, her children, Mr. Tanimoto, and the priests. The theological student comes back from the Novitiate with some of the other priests, who had wanted to get to their friends in the city to help but did not know how to find them. Mr. Tanimoto ferries the two injured priests, Father LaSalle and Father Schiffer, up the river with a couple of the new arrivals, so that they can find a clear roadway back out to the Novitiate. Father Kleinsorge decides he is too feeble to make the journey out, so he decides to stay at the park until the next day, when, hopefully, Mrs. Nakamura and her children will be strong enough to come with him.
Mr. Tanimoto continues his ferrying work, reminding himself that these grotesquely wounded creatures are human beings. He feels a rush of anger that the hospital ship has not arrived yet (here, Hersey interjects that, in fact, it never did arrive). Dr. Fujii, out at his family's house on the edge of the city, assesses his injuries: he has multiple fractures, abrasions, and lacerations. At the Red Cross Hospital, Dr. Sasaki is worn out, since ten thousand victims of the explosion have invaded seeking treatment. After nineteen straight hours of work, Dr. Sasaki tries to sleep, but the wounded eventually swarm him and ask how he can sleep when they need help.
Early the next day there are two broadcasts, most of which are not heard by the injured residents of Hiroshima. The first is from the Japanese radio announcing that a new type of bomb had been used, and that the details are being investigated. The second broadcast is by the President of the United States, announcing that the bomb was atomic, and more than two thousand times the blast power of the largest bomb that had been used in war to date. Hersey remarks that only the United States, with its industrial know-how and its willingness to throw two billion dollars into a wartime gamble, could have possibly developed such a weapon.
Angry that no doctor has yet come to help the injured in Asano Park, Mr. Tanimoto goes to the East Parade Ground to find one himself. He finds a group of severely overburdened doctors with an army medical unit there, and asks one why he has not yet come to Asano Park. The doctor tells him that the first priority is not to care for the heavily wounded, but rather for the slightly wounded, since they have a better chance of survival. Many of the people in Asano Park are too wounded to be saved. Mr. Tanimoto realizes he cannot argue, and instead takes back some rice and biscuits in lieu of a doctor.
Father Kleinsorge sets out with an empty bottle and kettle to find fresh tap water to bring back for the wounded in the park. He returns and finds twenty heavily wounded soldiers asking for water, and siphons the water into their disfigured mouths through the stem of a piece of grass. He realizes how numb he has become to seeing others' pain, when he used to not even be able to look at a cut on someone's finger without feeling faint. In the park, it is difficult for the children to maintain a sense of tragedy: Toshio Nakamura, Mrs. Nakamura's son, cheerfully greets a friend when he sees him.
The priests arrive back to take some important mission items, as well as the Nakamura children, out to the Novitiate. Father Kleinsorge stops to file a claim for property damage at the prefectural police station, which he had been informed he was allowed to do, and then heads out to the Novitiate himself, shocked by how far-reaching the damage form the bomb is.
Miss Sasaki is left for two days and nights under the makeshift lean-to with her crushed leg. On the third day, some friends who supposed she was dead come to look for her body. They find her and tell her that her mother, father, and baby brother, who had been in the Tamura Pediatric Hospital, are almost certainly dead, since the hospital was totally destroyed. Later, some men come to take her to a relief station, and Army doctors look at her to determine whether or not they need to amputate her leg. She is taken by boat to a military hospital on a nearby island, where a doctor determines she will not need an amputation and wants to send her back to Hiroshima, but she has such a terrible fever that he decides to let her stay.
Father Cieslik goes back to the mission house to look for Mr. Fukai, the mission secretary who had run back into the fire after being dragged out. He cannot find any trace of him, and they determine that Mr. Fukai, eager to die with his country, had gone back to immolate himself in the flames. At the Red Cross Hospital, Dr. Sasaki works for three days with only one hour of sleep. Finally, he gets permission to go out to his home in Mukaihara to assure his mother that he is not dead.
On the morning of August 9th, a second atomic bomb is dropped, this time on the city of Nagasaki. It is several days before the citizens of Hiroshima know about this, since the Japanese radio has been being extremely cautious in discussing this strange weapon.
At the Novitiate, the Jesuits take in about fifty refugees, including the Nakamuras. A friend, Mrs. Osaki, comes to visit them and tells them that her son, Hideo, had been burned alive in the factory where he worked, which hits young Toshio hard because he had idolized the older boy. He has terrible nightmares that night. On August 10th, Father Kleinsorge sends Father Cieslik to find out how Dr. Fujii is doing, since he had been injured and went out to stay at a friend's summer house. Dr. Fujii is hurt, but healing, and he visits with him for a while and they discuss the bomb. Dr. Fujii believes the bomb was not a bomb at all, but rather a fine, magnesium powder sprayed over the city that exploded when it came into contact with the live wires of the city's power system.
After spending five days helping the wounded in Asano Park, Mr. Tanimoto finally goes back to his church to dig for anything that is left in the ruins. There, a woman named Miss Tanaka tells him that her father is asking for him. Mr. Tanimoto has good reason to hate Mr. Tanaka, who is a notoriously selfish and cruel rich man, a man who has accused Mr. Tanimoto of spying for the Americans and denounced Christianity as un-Japanese. However, he is dying from his weakness and injuries after the bombing, and is willing to be confronted by any religion as he dies. Mr. Tanimoto agrees to help him, and reads a psalm to the man as he passes away.
At the Novitiate, Father Cieslik works to comfort a pair of children, the Kataokas, who had been separated heir mother. A few days later, he tries to hunt for their family, and at last manages to get in touch with their older brother and return them to their mother. A week after the bomb drops, rumors start spreading through Hiroshima that the city had been destroyed by the energy that is released when atoms had somehow been split in two, which does not make sense to most people. Physicists begin entering the city with tools to study what has happened.
The Nakamuras move out of the Novitiate to a nearby town to stay with Mrs. Nakamura's sister-in-law. At the Red Cross Hospital, Dr. Sasaki has finally established a means of classifying his patients. On the morning of August 15th, Emperor Hirohito himself comes on the radio to broadcast a message that the war is over and Japan has been defeated. The people of Hiroshima are disappointed, of course, but are awed and honored to hear the emperor speaking directly to the common people. According to Mr. Tanimoto,they view the surrender as "wholehearted sacrifice for the everlasting peace of the world." (Chapter 3, pg. 81)
Analysis
Whereas Chapters 1 and 2 dealt with the bombing and the immediate aftermath, Chapter 3 begins to hint at the long-term affects on citizens' lives as more than a week passes. At some point, they can no longer be immobilized by shock: they must accept what has happened and find a way to continue living, whether that means seeking help from farther removed family members or getting themselves to a safer place outside the city. Now that the initial shock has worn off, the primary sentiment is one of frenzied confusion: what exactly happened to them? What was this mysterious bomb that had so severely devastated the city and its inhabitants? The Japan of the early 20th century was very different from the Japan we are familiar with today—it was far more culturally and scientifically isolated, which explains the citizens' inability to fathom such a destructive technology.
The rest of the world, including Hersey's readers, would have been deeply aware of the affect the use of the first atomic bomb would have on history, and the terrifying precedent it could set. However, the victims in Hiroshima are far removed from all this international speculation, concerned only with their lives and the lives of the people they care about. They are not given a chance to process the massive implications of what has happened, because they are fighting for survival. This truth brings an individual human element to a tragedy that, for outsiders like Americans, is easily reduced to a matter of numbers.
This chapter in particular makes it clear that the wounds from the bomb are not just physical, but psychological as well. Now that time has begun to pass, the horror of what has happened sets in, tormenting the survivors' minds as well as their bodies. We see this with Toshio Nakamura, who wakes screaming from terrible nightmares after he learned his friend and idol was burned alive. Though the children seemingly are able to shrug off the tragedy quicker than adults, Toshio's experience is a chilling reminder that even the children will be affected by the bombing long into the future, reliving the experience in their minds.
Mr. Tanimoto has been tirelessly working to help the wounded, though he is not a doctor himself—instead, he is a man of faith, and his moral compass guides him to do what is right. Though everything he does for the wounded in Asano Park is exemplary, a true mark of his character comes when he agrees to read final blessings to Mr. Tanaka, a man who denounces Christianity, Mr. Tanimoto's religion, and who has actively shown him disrespect. Mr. Tanimoto's willingness to honor the dead and dying supersedes his personal disagreements, and in this moment he shows himself to be a man of exemplary character.
With the end of Chapter 3 comes the Japanese surrender in World War II, which marked the end of the war entirely, since it had already ended on the European front. Mr. Tanimoto's remarks at the end of the chapter give some insight into the way the common Japanese people rationalized the surrender. Though in this case many believed them to be on the wrong side of history, the Japanese were not evil people: like citizens of any other country, they were loyal to their government and eager to serve their nation. A surrender, especially after all they lost, was demoralizing, but they healed this wound by deciding that the surrender was for the greater good of peace in the world. This was an important mindset on the road to Japan's recovery, and contributed to its development into the strong, modern nation it is today.
