Hiroshima Case

Around the world today there is always a horrible and horrific event taking place, killing many people. Hiroshima was one of these events that resulted in the killings of millions in Japan. John Hersey's Hiroshima is based off of this historical event, and follows the struggles and sufferings of six people distubed by this event. Hiroshima is a great nonfiction novel written in order to help readers undertand the suffering people went through after the bomb.

The bomb was dropped in Hiroshima in 1945 killing over one hundred thousand innocent people. In the novel, readers are easily able to see how after the bomb dropped, people who effected not only in the present but also the future. Humans are always forced daily to deal with positons that they do not want to be in. In the world today, horrible situations are taking place that are damaging and putting people in pain. Human suffering is important to discuss because it will always be an on going event unless we have world peace. Authors also find human agony a very imporant thing to write about. This is because there is a John Hersey's Hiroshima is a factual account about the day the United States

government dropped the first atom bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. John

interviewed six survivors and reported their stories in a factual but

interesting fashion. He gives a brief description of each person and tells

of his or her daily activities both before and after the explosion. Hersey's

descriptions of people and events give the reader a feeling of actually being

at the scene. He intensifies each character's need to survive. The sense of

survival is deeply rooted in the hearts of most people.

One of the survivors ("hibakusha" as they were known), Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura,

is described as "...a tailor's widow, [who] stood by the window of her kitchen,

watching a neighbor tearing down his house because it lay in the path of an

air-raid-defense fire lane"(1). I was very impressed by Mrs. Nakamura and

her determination to survive and to help her children survive. After the

bomb exploded she found herself being thrown into the next room and buried

under debris; but the cries of her youngest child Myeko made her break free

to rescue her children. After struggling through debris and making a path,

she found all three of her children and took them outside. However,