Hiroshima

Content Warning: The source text contains graphic descriptions of the injuries and illness caused by the bombing of Hiroshima. Some of these descriptions are quoted in this section to reflect the book’s content and intent.

“A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition—a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next—that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything.”

Hersey mentions the total death toll here, but doesn’t dwell on the large-scale effects of the bomb, shifting immediately to individual stories. Right from the start, the theme of The Fragility of Life is present. None of the six people Hersey describes had a clue of what would come or how to avoid it; they all survived by sheer luck. Hersey uses the masculine pronoun “he” to refer to a group of people that included both men and women. This was standard at the time the book was written and recurs occasionally in the text.

“Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky Mr. Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it travelled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed a sheet of sun. Both he and Mr. Matsuo reacted in terror—and both had time to react (for they were 3,500 yards, or two miles, from the center of the explosion). Mr. Matsuo dashed up the front steps into the house and dived among the bedrolls and buried himself there. Mr. Tanimoto took four or five steps and threw himself between two big rocks in the garden. He bellied up very hard against one of them. As his face was against the stone, he did not see what happened. He felt a sudden pressure, and then splinters and pieces of board and fragments of tile fell on him. He heard no roar.”

This exemplifies how Hersey reported just what one of the characters saw, heard, and experienced. The above is a straightforward description of what Rev. Tanimoto did as the bomb hit. Hersey presents the information neutrally and objectively, except for the description of the flash as “a sheet of sun.” This tremendous light is present in each character’s story, uniting them.

“Under what seemed to be a local dust cloud, the day grew darker and darker.”

This is an example of both Hersey’s factual, straightforward reporting and his use of literary techniques—in this case, foreshadowing. The force of the explosion caused all manner of particles and dust to rise into the sky, obliterating the sun’s light. The result was darkness that settled over the city.