Hiroshima By John Hersey

 John Hersey, at one point considered one of the nation 's most promising young writers, wrote many pieces that left an emotional impact on his audience. Although he portrayed himself as having a strict and immovable morality through his writings, he appreciated variety. He is known best for writing Hiroshima, in which he strongly expressed the horrors of the use of nuclear weapons. His writings and their meanings are based on historical events, such as the bombing of Hiroshima, allowing him to create an accurate depiction of what occurred. Hersey dedicated his works to revealing the effects of worldwide issues during that time.     Having been born and raised in Tientsin, China, Hersey had a connection to the Far …show more content…
This helped unearth the prejudice that Japanese citizens ' sole purpose was to serve the emperor and to destroy their American enemy (Sharp). In the same way that he showed the similarities between Japanese and American citizens, he helped reveal the terrors of the aftermath of the bomb, specifically the effects the radiation had on the survivors. It showed the painful truth that surviving the blast only meant a slow and painful death from radiation poisoning.     By writing Hiroshima, Hersey made it known to the general public that nuclear weapons have terrible, long lasting effects not previously known. He communicated his point by showing readers what the victims were "doing when the bomb was dropped, how they reacted to it, how they behaved afterward, and how they felt throughout their ordeals." (DISCovering Authors).     The novel focuses on the experiences of six Japanese civilians, all from different backgrounds: Miss Toshinki Sasaki, Dr. Masakazu Fujii, Miss Hatsuyo Nakamura, Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, Dr. Terufimi Sasaki, and Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto. The bomb fell at 8:16 in the morning, on August 6, 1945. Many city goers were in the middle of their morning routines, unaware that many of them were minutes from their …show more content…
In one case of this, a documentary film about the effects on the human body was classified and kept secret for 22 years (Sharp). Reasons like this argue the point that the bomb should never have been dropped, and the release of this novel helped rectify people 's morality towards these weapons.      Ultimately, Hiroshima tells of the unforeseen and deadly results of the atomic bomb. It portrays this idea by impartially reporting the stories of six survivors of the blast and the days following when many thought the world itself was coming to an end. The inspiration for this novel resulted from Hersey 's passion for writing and reporting that he discovered in his college years and early career. After years of reporting about the actions of both sides in World War Two for Life magazine, Hersey was further inspired to report the event in such a way from traveling to Hiroshima itself for the interviews. The interviews that because the novel told the story of the day of and the days after the bombing and what the remaining citizens encountered in their attempts to survive. The novel successfully personified the victims of the blast to the American public in a way that hadn 't been done before, and it drastically changed the moral views about nuclear warfare