Penguin Classics, 1966, softcover, 120 pages, condition: very good.
When the atom bomb was dropped on 6 August 1945, it devastated a great city and knocked Japan out of the war.
John Hersey, the distinguished American writer, was sent nine months later to Hiroshima to find out, in human and not scientific terms, what had happened. Little over a year after the event his account appeared in the New Yorker (occupying a complete issue) and as a Penguin.
Hersey's unforgettable narrative, which is built round that experiences of six survivors in a city where 100,000 men, women and children were killed, is now re-issued as a Penguin Modern Classic. It supplies an epitaph to those who died in one of history's most catestrophic events and a grave warning to the present and the future.
The cover, designed by Germano Facetti, shows a detail from Victims of Hiroshima by Kando Shosoi, in the Museum of Hiroshima (Bisonte)
It seems almost indecent to put a rating on this book, I feel as if I am giving all these poor people's horrific suffering an excellent. Yet this is a very powerful book, told in a matter of fact, reporting tone and it is an account that puts a human face to this devastation. By following certain survivors we come to see and in my case to care greatly about these poor people. How much suffering and horror this bomb caused, on innocent people at the mercy of their emperor's decisions. People like you and I just trying to live their lives, feed their children, take care of their families. Not knowing what happened, what type of new weapon caused this total devastation.
A young doctor, one of the few available in the immediate aftermath, who tries to take care of those he can with very few supplies and with only one hour of sleep in three days. Another man who brings water to those who need it and tries to save as many as he can. A young woman holding a dead baby for over four days, waiting for her husband to be found so he can say goodbye. So much anguish, so much heartbreak.
My husband's uncle was the load master for the Enola Gay, the bomber for this terrible act. He suffered from depression for the rest of his life. Why do these terrible things happen and why do they still continue today?
