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Shikata Ganai - It Cant Be Helped
Welcome to August 6, 1945. In a final attempt to end World War II, the United States of America drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a major industrial and military center. Temperatures are more sweltering than the surface of the sun. Light is resplendent. Air is thick and heavy with an enveloping radiation. John Hershey informs us of the experiences of six people that survived the planets’ first nuclear explosion in Hiroshima.
Hiroshima begins by characterizing the situations of the six individuals just before and at the moment of the explosion that changed history. The book first introduces Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a personnel clerk in the East Asia Tin works, who had just turned to chat with her friend during a rest from work. Next, Dr. Masakazu Fujii, a doctor at a private hospital, was introduced as relaxing on his clinic’s porch and reading the daily newspaper, a stone’s throw away from a calm river. At the same time, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura was watching her next door neighbor, who was making way for a larger fire escape route, through her kitchen window. Fr. Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German priest, was lying on a couch in his room reading a magazine, corresponding with the actions of Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a surgeon who was walking down a hospital corridor carrying blood specimens. Finally, Rev. Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, the pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, was in the process of tiredly moving the belongings of his house of worship. Unbeknownst to these innocent civilians as they were carrying out their daily tasks, a plane called the Enola Gay silently passed unnoticed overhead and quietly dropped the world’s deadliest bomb that altered the future. A noiseless flash of light was the only warning they received, a split-second which gave them just enough time to turn their heads. The bomb detonated at ground zero, and in seconds, hell unlike any other kind unraveled. Miss Sasaki was knocked unconscious when her bookcase, due to the impact of the blast, trampled her to the ground. She lay trapped, as the bookcase had fallen on and crushed her leg, leaving her crippled. In the years to follow, she learns to overcome this disability and enters a house of Catholic nuns. She spends a great deal of her life aiding orphaned children.
The book “Hiroshima,” written by John Hersey is an alluring piece coupled with an underlining, mind grabbing message. The book is a biographical text about the lives of six people: Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamura, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki, and Rev. Tanimoto, in Hiroshima, Japan. It speaks of these aforementioned individuals’ lives, following the dropping of the world’s first atomic bomb on 06 Aug 1945, and how it radically changed them, forever. John Hersey, the author of “Hiroshima,” attempts to expose the monstrosity of the atomic bomb, through his use of outstanding rhetoric, descriptive language, and accounts of survivors. He also attempts to correlate the Japanese civilians of Hiroshima to the American public, in hope that Americans
The crises to which this work responds was the total annihilation of Hiroshima and the aftershock experienced by those left behind. Those who witnessed this devastation were left to make sense of it, and then attempt to carry on with their lives. Aki had temporarily managed to go on with her life until she went to visit her friend Tomiko. At her friends house she saw "two small jars"that contained "fetuses that had been miscarried"( Takenishi 1895), most likely an after affect of being exposed to the bomb. The sight of these fetuses must have stirred some deeply buried feelings, because shortly afterwards, Aki started to have very disturbing flashbacks and dreams of the devastating event that took place during her childhood. Through these dreams and flashbacks it becomes apparent that Aki is unable to acquire any closure regarding this horrible event. This feeling of deficiency could be, in part, attributed to her feeling that there was a shameful lack of consideration shown for the "rites" owed to those who died. In her eyes they were never properly laid to rest; Therefore they" will not rest in peace" (Takenishi 18...
As a matter of first importance, the characters in the story are incredibly affected by the Hiroshima bomb dropping. The bomb being
Born on July 4, 1916, in Los Angeles, California, to the parents of Jun and Fumi Toguri, Iva Ikoku Toguri was an American citizen with Japanese heritage (Lerner 163; Tokyo1). Toguri and her three siblings were raised in a predominantly white neighborhood in Compton, California, where their father disapproved of them learning the Japanese language so they could better fit into American society. Toguri eventually went on to attend Compton Junior College after finishing high school and then transferred to University of California, Los Angeles where she graduated in 1941 with a zoology degree (Iva 1; Tokyo 1). Soon after college, Toguri left America to tend to an extremely ill aunt in Japan on July 5, 1941. Unfortunately, she only acquired a certificate of identification from the US State Department and not an actual passport. After six months, Toguri planned to return home on a ship on December 2 but missed it due to passport complications (Lerner 163; Tokyo1, 2).
In the book Hiroshima, author paints the picture of the city and its residents' break point in life: before and after the drop of the "Fat Boy". Six people - six different lives all shattered by the nuclear explosion. The extraordinary pain and devastation of a hundred thousand are expressed through the prism of six stories as they seen by the author. Lives of Miss Toshiko Sasaki and of Dr. Masakazu Fujii serve as two contrasting examples of the opposite directions the victims' life had taken after the disaster. In her "past life" Toshiko was a personnel department clerk; she had a family, and a fiancé. At a quarter past eight, August 6th 1945, the bombing took her parents and a baby-brother, made her partially invalid, and destroyed her personal life. Dr. Fujii had a small private hospital, and led a peaceful and jolly life quietly enjoying his fruits of the labor. He was reading a newspaper on the porch of his clinic when he saw the bright flash of the explosion almost a mile away from the epicenter. Both these people have gotten through the hell of the A-Bomb, but the catastrophe affected them differently. Somehow, the escape from a certain death made Dr. Fujii much more self-concerned and egotistic. He began to drown in self-indulgence, and completely lost the compassion and responsibility to his patients.
In John Hersey's book, Hiroshima, he provides a detailed account of six people and how the bombing of Hiroshima affected their lives. John Heresy felt it was important to focus his story on six individuals to create a remembrance that war affects more than just nations and countries, but actual human beings. Moreover, the book details the effect the bomb had on the city of Hiroshima. “Houses all around were burning, and the wind was now blowing hard.” (Hersey, 27).
The non-fiction book Hiroshima by John Hersey is an engaging text with a powerful message in it. The book is a biographical text about lives of six people Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamura, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki and Rev. Tanimoto in Hiroshima, Japan and how their lives completely changed at 8:15 on the 6th of August 1945 by the dropping of the first atomic bomb. The author, John Hersey, through his use of descriptive language the in book Hiroshima exposes the many horrors of a nuclear attack.
Years later people do not know the challenges Hiroshima had to undergo. Takashi explains, “those who survived must continue to talk about our experiences.” The violence experienced by Takashi and many others needs to be told by everyone. The hardship that the city of Hiroshima coped with should never be forgotten. The pain the country experienced was never exposed to the public. No one knows what the survivors had to recover from because it is hidden from the public.
“Hiroshima,” brings to light the psychological impact the detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima had. Following the atomic bomb, over a hundred thousand people were dead and another one hundred thousand people severely injured in a city with a population of 250,000. Dr. Sasaki and Mr. Tanimoto were left wondering why they had survived while so many others had perished, this is known as survivor’s guilt and it can be very heavy and dangerous baggage to carry. On the historic day of the first use of the atomic weapon, Mr. Tanimoto spent most of his time helping people however, one night he was walking in the dark and he tripped over an injured person. He felt a sense of shame for accidentally hurting wounded people, who were in enough pain
“Little Boy” and “Fat Man”, the world’s first two nuclear bombs were dropped in two major cities in Japan: Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6th and 9th of August 1945. This “experiment” by the United States Government completely demolished the two cities, killing over 150,000 people instantly and nearly 50,000 people died from aftermath as well as radiation.
When looking at the aftermath of the atomic bomb in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima the devastation it caused is evident. The majority of the population in Japan could have never imagined such a catastrophic event. On August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945 massive amounts of lives were changed forever when an atomic bomb fell from the sky and created an explosion as bright as the sun. These two bombs were the first and only accounts of nuclear warfare. (“Atomic Bomb is…”) The impact that the two bombs left on the cities of Japan was tremendous. The bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima devastated the country through structural damage, long term medical effects, expenses, and the massive loss of life.
At 5:30 AM July 16th 1945, the nuclear age had started. The world’s first atomic bomb was detonated. On August 6th 1942 at 8:15 AM, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped a perfected atomic bomb created by the Americans, over the city of Hiroshima hoping to end the war. Thousands of people died in the two cities in Japan. They were Hiroshima and Nagasaki “the Manhattan Project”. The research and development project that produced these atomic bombs during this time was known as “the Manhattan Project”.
"Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky . Mr. Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it traveled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed like a sheet of sun. John Hersey, from Hiroshima, pp8 On August 6, 1945, the world changed forever. On that day the United States of America detonated an atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Never before had mankind seen anything like. Here was something that was slightly bigger than an ordinary bomb, yet could cause infinitely more destruction. It could rip through walls and tear down houses like the devils wrecking ball. In Hiroshima it killed 100,000 people, most non-military civilians. Three days later in Nagasaki it killed roughly 40,000 . The immediate effects of these bombings were simple. The Japanese government surrendered, unconditionally, to the United States. The rest of the world rejoiced as the most destructive war in the history of mankind came to an end . All while the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki tried to piece together what was left of their lives, families and homes. Over the course of the next forty years, these two bombings, and the nuclear arms race that followed them, would come to have a direct or indirect effect on almost every man, woman and child on this Earth, including people in the United States. The atomic bomb would penetrate every fabric of American existence. From our politics to our educational system. Our industry and our art. Historians have gone so far as to call this period in our history the Òatomic ageÓ for the way it has shaped and guided world politics, relations and culture.
The devastation brought about by the atomic bomb has caused fear among all the people that have realized the potential destructive power of its invention. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945 completely obliterated both cities (Lanouette 30). “Little Boy,” the bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 70,000 people with an additional 66,000 injured (30-39). “Fat Man,” the bomb dropped on Nagasaki also carried its “share of America’s duty” by killing 40,000 people and injuring another 25,000 (30-39). The bombs also killed an estimated 230,000 more people from the after effects of the two explosions (30). The two bombings had opened the world’s eyes to the destructive power that could be unleashed by man.
The way the Chinese have conceived of their past, and of themselves, was profoundly shaped by the Shiji. The Shiji, or Historical Records, was a monumental work composed of 130 chapters written during the Han dynasty by Sima Qian. It presented the past from several perspectives: a chronological narrative of political events; topical accounts of key institutions; and biographies of individuals that Qian saw as important. The political narrative began with the Yellow Lord and continued through the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, down to the Han dynasty and Emperor Wudi of Sima Qian's day. Chronological charts with genealogical data and information on government posts came next, such as the calendar, state ritual, the construction of waterworks, and government finance. Thirty chapters were devoted to the ruling houses of the states of the Zhou period, recounting the reigns of successive rulers. These were supplemented by seventy chapters on other important individuals, including not only great officials and generals, but also people not associated with the government, both the famous and infamous including: philosophers, poets, merchants, magicians, and even rebels. Even non-Han people along the frontiers were described in narrative accounts. The emergence of a unified empire out of the warring States of pre-Qin China, the consolidation of the former Han, and the relations between the empire and the surrounding people groups were major themes in the Shiji. Qian’s records also offer insights through his role as a historian and his attempt to resolve a life changing experience he distinguished in his own life. Equally important, Sima Qian, by writing so well on so much, had a profound impact on Chinese thinking about government, pers...