John Hersey's Hiroshima

Why Hiroshima was such an ideal target for American bombing

In the year 1945, On the 6th of August precisely, at exactly 15 minutes past 8 in the morning (8.15am) the little boy (A-bomb) exploded showering Hiroshima city with radiation, x-rays and gamma rays. The eyewitness of the events in Hiroshima begins by narrating how these events took place. The Atomic bomb starts as a light in the sky, then turns to a magnesium burn blistering in the sky, a sheet of sun and finally into a soundless flash. Within a fraction of a second, more than half of the city was destroyed leaving more than 80000 people dead and more injured. In the book Hiroshima by John Hersey, he looked at several factors that made Hiroshima an ideal place for American bombing, the experiences of characters in his book and their occupation before the attack and the side effects of radiation sickness. Also in this essay, I explained why the medical staff and rescuers effort to save the victims had so little impact immediately after the explosion.

The city of Hiroshima was an ideal target for various reasons. First, Hiroshima is situated at the wider, delta of river Ota making it nearly level and rising a little over the sea level.

These personal stories help to show how Hiroshima had no unity as people lived their own lives. For instance, most characters we encounter live by themselves and people who have families like Dr, Fuji does not live with them where his wife resides in Osaka, and Fuji resides in Hiroshima. These anecdotes show that Hiroshima had no united political or nationwide reaction to the attack, however, after the bomb, all the affected came together as one community despite their differences. “One feeling they did seem to share, however, was a curious kind of related community spirit . . . Pride in the way they and their fellow survivors had stood up to a dreadful ordeal’’ (Hersey