Long-Term Suffering in Hiroshima United States President Herbert Hoover voiced “the use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts [his] soul,” accurately depicting the sentiment of countless Japanese civilians “at exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the movement when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima” (Hersey 1).
Hiroshima, by John Hersey, recounts the tales of six individuals who survived from history’s first atomic bombing. Hersey vividly, and even graphically, illustrates the magnitude of a nuclear attack’s impact not only as massive physical and structural destructions, but also as severe emotional and psychological devastations, too. There are two primary ways in which he depicts the peoples’ sufferings: short-term and long-term effects. …show more content…
When Mr. Tanimoto, a pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, realizes that people sinking in the river were too weak to lift themselves aboard his boat, “he reaches down to take a woman by the hands, but her skin slipped off in a huge, glovelike piece” (Hersey 45). This memory, as horrific as it is, entails that the bombing’s impact was so powerful to the degree in which people’s skins would detach from their bodies. Structural damage is illustrated when Ms. Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, “lay in steady pain” (Hersey 68) when a falling bookshelf leaves her with a lifelong leg injury. Not only did the Hiroshima bombing cause physical damage by burning or from the radiation, but also massive structural damage across the entire