...Trung Pham Professor John D. Kearney History 1302 16 July 2014 Exam One Writing Assignment While reading Hiroshima by John Hersey, Chapter Two: The Fire, stood of particular interest to me and later became what I regarded to be the most significant chapter of the entire novel. It vividly encaptures the absolute terror the people of Hiroshima faced in the wake of the explosion. From the viewpoints of six survivors, I was able to imagine just how devastating the force of the atomic bomb could be. The Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, had noticed that “not just a patch of Koi, as he had expected, but as much of Hiroshima as he could see through the clouded air was giving off a thick, dreadful miasma” (Hersey 18). Fearful for his family and church, he ran into the city amidst burning houses and charred trees as thousands were fleeing, desperate to find them. At the same time, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, having just pulled herself out of the ruins of her own house, struggled to free her youngest daughter Myeko, who was “buried breast-deep and unable to move” (Hersey 18). The third survivor, Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, S.J., a German priest, gathered whatever he could and hurried to reunite with the other members of his mission house, many of who were injured and required immediate medical attention (Hersey 21). The fourth, a physician by the name of Masakazu Fujii, was trapped between wooden beams above the...
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