Originally a long-form article written in 1946, this is the story of six survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, with a follow up from decades on documenting the ups and downs of the survivors’ lives.
This far on from the event, the enormity of the effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is commonly known, even if it’s still playing out even today. As such it’s rather hard to fully understand how much of a sensation this book was at the time of its publication in bringing home the true horror of the usage of the bomb on a civilian population.
Hersey used a restrained, almost flat tone in his writing, which only served to bring the horrible sights and sounds of that day to the forefront. I appreciated that the follow up sections which went into details about the later lives of the survivors, showing how the bombing impacted them even decades on, as well as showing through their stories the recovery of Hiroshima at large.
However, though I suppose this is the limitation of journalism, I thought we had a pretty narrow sample size to follow. As Hersey’s first witness was a German Jesuit priest, and it was through the priest that he met the other survivors he followed, we therefore draw from a pretty small group of people who were acquainted with each other. Only two subjects, the women, are working class – the other interviewees are well off. It would have been interesting to get a larger cross section of society.
I listened to the audiobook version narrated by George Guidall. I thought he did a good job of preserving the objective voice of the narrative, and to my untrained ear the Japanese names and words sounded alright.