A clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, Toshiko Sasaki’s life is changed forever by August 6, 1945. Her traditional sense of duty to family and her uncomplaining physical suffering are qualities that lead directly to her vocation as a nun. Ironically, the bombing may have […]
Read more Character Analysis Miss Toshiko SasakiSummary and Analysis Chapter 5 – The Aftermath
Summary In the years from 1946 to 1985, the six survivors’ lives went in several directions. After 1945, the Japanese began to use the word hibakusha, meaning “explosion affected persons” to describe the bomb survivors. Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, often sick from radiation illness, struggled to keep her family alive, sheltered, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 5 – The AftermathSummary and Analysis Chapter 4 – Panic Grass and Feverfew
Summary Chapter 4 begins on August 18 and relates events up to a year after the bombing. Once physicists determine that the radiation level is safe for people to return to Hiroshima, the six survivors come back but each is suffering from radiation sickness. Father Kleinsorge connects with two of […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 4 – Panic Grass and FeverfewSummary and Analysis Chapter 3 – Details Are Being Investigated
Summary It is the evening of August 6. After 12 hours of post-bomb suffering, a Japanese naval launch moves slowly down the seven rivers of Hiroshima, stopping at strategic spots. A young naval officer in a neat uniform announces that there is hope and that the people should be patient […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 3 – Details Are Being InvestigatedSummary and Analysis Chapter 2 – The Fire
Summary Right after the explosion, smoke is pushing up through the clouds of dust, and as the houses burn, large water droplets fall. Although the bomb caused fires citywide, other fires break out from inflammable wreckage that falls on peoples’ stoves as well as on live wires. A lot of […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 2 – The FireSummary and Analysis Chapter 1 – A Noiseless Flash
Summary It is early morning on August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima, Japan. At 7:00 a.m. a loud siren warns of an impending American bombing raid. The “all-clear siren” sounds an hour later. At 8:15 a.m. Japanese time, an atomic bomb is dropped from an American airplane on the 245,000 residents […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 1 – A Noiseless FlashCharacter List
Miss Toshiko Sasaki A twenty-year-old personnel department clerk for the East Asia Tin Works. On August 6, 1945, she is at work. When the bomb explodes, she is buried in the debris and her leg is crushed under heavy bookcases. She survives, raises her siblings, and converts to Catholicism, becoming […]
Read more Character ListAbout Hiroshima
In September 1945, young John Hersey was sent to the Far East on assignment for the New Yorker and Life magazines. He had already published three books, Men on Bataan, Into the Valley, and A Bell for Adano, with the latter bringing him the Pulitzer Prize earlier in May. His […]
Read more About HiroshimaBook Summary
On August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb is dropped from an American plane on the 245,000 residents of Hiroshima, Japan. Most of the city is destroyed and thousands of its inhabitants die. Some of its citizens survive and suffer the debilitating effects of terrible burns and radiation illness. The […]
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