Summary
Chapter 5 is not part of Hersey's original Hiroshima report; he published an additional section called The Aftermath 40 years later in 1985, detailing the lives of the six survivors he had investigated in the decades following the bombing. In the years after the bomb was dropped, the Japanese begin using the term hibakusha to refer to survivors, which literally translates to "explosion affected people."
Mrs. Nakamura struggles with radiation sickness for years, and on top of this, she faces extreme poverty and has difficulty providing for herself and her children. Eventually, the government steps in to help hibakusha like Mrs. Nakamura, and her life begins to improve. She is able to rent a house for $1 per month, and is hired at a mothball company whose owner does not discriminate against hibakusha in his hiring practices. She works there for thirteen years, and is finally able to retire when her son Toshio reaches the right age to begin working to support his family. She lives comfortably, takes up hobbies like dancing and embroidery, and watches her daughters marry and move away. 40 years after the bombing, she still deals with radiation sickness, but has learned to treat it on her own. In the piece, Hersey describes her dancing in a Hiroshima flower festival along Peace Boulevard.
Dr. Sasaki obtains his doctoral degree and spends many of the years following the bombing treating keloids, which are abnormal growths of red, rubbery scar tissue at the site of an injury or burn that were common in hibakusha. He continues working at the Red Cross Hospital for a while, but eventually the experiences and memories associated with treating survivors during the bombing become too much, so he leaves to open a private clinic in Makaihara. The rest of his life, however, is marred by tragedy. He nearly dies in 1963, after he is diagnosed with lung cancer and there are complications during an operation to remove one of his lungs. In 1972, his wife dies of breast cancer, which motivates him to pour himself into his work and expand his practice to include a larger geriatric clinic. Though he is distanced from Hiroshima in both mind and body, he occasionally treats a hibakusha, and memories come flooding back.
Though he still suffers from radiation sickness himself, Father Kleinsorge dedicates the rest of his life to helping Hiroshima survivors recover and seek spiritual healing. Devoting himself fully to this country he loves, he becomes a Japanese citizen and takes the name Father Makoto Takakura. He moves to a small church in Mukaihara and begins a relationship with the woman who was his cook and nurse, Satsue Yoshiki. His health deteriorates, and in 1976 he becomes bedridden when he slips on an icy path and fractures his back. He dies in 1977 and is buried by the Novitiate. According to Hersey, flowers are frequently found at his gravesite.
Once she is out of the hospital, Miss Sasaki lives with her younger siblings, Yasuo and Yaeko, in the suburbs. Her leg never fully recovers, and she has three different operations for it. She initially works in orphanages, but after struggling to keep her family going, she decides to take heart in Father Kleinsorge's words to her all those years ago and become a nun. In 1957, she takes her vows and becomes Sister Dominique Sasaki, beginning a prosperous career of traveling the world, helping others, and talking about the way having her life spared during the bombing has inspired her to move forward. She is honored at a dinner in Tokyo in 1980.
Dr. Fujii has no severe, prolonged illness following the bombing. He lives a life devoted to pleasure activities, including golf, drinking, and partying in Hiroshima's entertainment district. He rebuilds his private clinic in the city, though never to its old heights, and begins a family of his own, eventually having five children. He travels to New York as a chaperone for the "Hiroshima Maidens," who are a group of young Japanese women who needed plastic surgery following the bombing. When he returns to Japan, he builds an over-the-top American home for himself, but is found unconscious in 1963 after a gas heater leaked in his bedroom. He remains in a coma for much of the next decade, until he eventually dies in 1973.
The rest of Mr. Tanimoto's life is focuses on peace movements and fundraising on behalf of the hibakusha. He travels to America on three separate occasions to raise money, and there he connects with many influential people, including author Pearl Buck and Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. Cousins includes Tanimoto's peace memorandum, titled "Hiroshima's Idea," in an editorial in the Saturday Review. However, all the publicity Mr. Tanimoto gets in America make many people in Japan label him a fame seeker, and he does not manage to have as profound an effect on the Japanese peace movement as he hoped. In 1982 Mr. Tanimoto retires, and Hersey ends this final chapter by remarking that, by that time, much of the world's memory of that terrible day was slowly fading, just like Mr. Tanimoto's own.
Analysis
Although Hiroshima often reads like a fiction story, it is essential to remember that Hersey is reporting the truth, and thus his subjects will not conform to a typical character arc. Following Chapter 4 and the end of the original report, it is uplifting to believe that the six subjects would all have gone on to have profound impacts on society following their near-death experience, validating the second chance at life that they were given. While this outcome may have been likely in a piece of fiction, it is not realistic to expect this from these very real people. Mr. Tanimoto, for example, tries to fundraise for victims and play a strong role in the Japanese peace movement, but does not have as meaningful of an effect as he intends. Father Kleinsorge's life ends abruptly after his health takes a turn for the worse, despite his self-sacrifice. Life is messy, and every victim of Hiroshima recovered from the tragedy—or didn't—differently. Chapter 5, an in-depth reporting of each subject's life trajectory, is a testament to this, and illustrates the truth that prosperity, happiness, and suffering can fluctuate: they are rarely linear, and never predictable.
In coping with their changed lives, these subjects show a combination of focusing on their own personal healing, but also turning their attention to other people who need aid. Their immediate needs must first be met, and for some, this takes a while—Mrs. Nakamura, for instance, struggles for a long time to feed and shelter her family before she begins living a comfortable life. Many, particularly Father Kleinsorge, struggle with radiation sickness, and Miss Sasaki spends her immediate years after the bombing dealing with the ever-present problem of her injured leg, undergoing multiple surgeries to improve her health and quality of life. After they have provided for their own needs, however, many of the subjects show their strength of character by serving others. Mr. Tanimoto, Father Kleinsorge, and Miss Sasaki all allow their faith to drive them to help bombing victims, and Dr. Sasaki, though deeply affected by the experience himself, continues to treat hibakusha because the skill of healing is ingrained in his being.
On the other side of the spectrum is Dr. Fujii, who has a more hedonistic response. The experience drives him to put himself and his own pleasures first, and he leads a life that many would consider flamboyant and over-the-top. This behavior was a clear sign of his struggle to cope, and all the materialistic pleasures in the world could not, in the end, bring him true happiness. His family falls apart, his health deteriorates, and, in the end, it is still not known whether or not his death was a suicide to end his suffering. But Hersey takes care not to vilify Dr. Fujii for the way he chose to live his life in the aftermath of the bombing—it may be a less noble response to tragedy than some of the other subjects, but it is no less human.
An important issue that Chapter 5 brings up is discrimination against the hibakusha, or atomic bomb victims. Mrs. Nakamura has trouble finding work because she is a hibakusha, and her experience is certainly not unique. In the years following the bombing, hibakusha often had trouble not only finding work, but also marrying, because the public was largely ignorant about the effects of radiation sickness and believed it to be contagious or hereditary. The Japanese government did not enact any policies to support hibakusha until 1954, almost ten years after the bombing. Survivors faced a constant uphill battle that stretched beyond their own health and well-being into their ability to function in the society they live in.
Chapter 5 spans 40 particularly tumultuous years, and the historical context at this time is relevant to the survivors' experiences post-bombing. Japan changed dramatically following World War II, forced to demilitarize with its constitution largely rewritten by the United States. Its economy grew exponentially, and it quickly Westernized, becoming a key American ally by the late 20th century. Public sentiment in Japan favored reconciliation with America, not revenge, and the world's attention turned to the battle between democracy and communism that ensued during the Cold War. As such, must of the tension over the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing fades from memory, overshadowed by the ever-changing global political climate. Even Mr. Tanimoto notes that he began to forget the horrors of that day—for better or for worse.
In this final installment of his report, Hersey does not insert his own interpretations. Instead, he simply reports, telling everyone's story in full detail without assessing what their experiences mean, nor what has been learned and lost. He does not leave his readers with definitive answers: rather, he leaves us with more questions about the impact the Hiroshima bombing would have, if any, on the state of world politics. If it is possible to forget the horrors of such a terrible event so quickly in favor of reconciliation and forward progress, then has the global community truly learned enough to prevent history from repeating itself? In 2017, the issue of nuclear proliferation is still extremely prominent, and the possibility that these weapons will be used again in conflict between two countries grows with each passing day. If John Hersey were still alive today, he would certainly insist that it is more important now than ever before to understand what happened in Hiroshima, and make sure it does not happen again.
