...Everybody already knew the facts and the statistics and the devastating outcome of August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city. But nobody understood or was able to establish some palpable sense of how horrific those moments leading up to the bombing was. In Hiroshima, or at least in the first chapter of John Hersey’s “journalistic masterpiece,” a human face is given to any speculation of what transpired that tragic morning. The first chapter is told through the memories of six survivors: Miss Toshiko Sasaki, Dr. Masakazu Fujii, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, and the Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto. Hersey grants readers the ability to empathize—albeit superficially—with the victims by giving us an account through the perspectives of the actual people who lived through the event. Though I can understand how one can interpret Hersey’s objective tone to be too dry and journalistic, I think the way he masterfully recounts each survivor’s story “makes up” for what may be perceived as indifference. Hersey deftly weaves their poignant narratives through the intimate and meticulous details of that day’s events for each person. In his storytelling, there is a tangible patience as he is intent on the reader absorbing every single action made and thought had by the person being written about and every single feature of the setting the person was in. He depicts the paranoid culture and the day-to-day...
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