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    Hiroshima
    Hiroshima
    Hiroshima
    Audiobook5 hours

    Hiroshima

    Written by John Hersey

    Narrated by George Guidall

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A journalistic masterpiece. John Hersey transports us back to the streets of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945-the day the city was destroyed by the first atomic bomb. Told through the memories of six survivors, Hiroshima is a timeless, powerful classic that will awaken your heart and your compassion. In this new edition, Hersey returns to Hiroshima to find the survivors-and to tell their fates in an eloquent and moving final chapter.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 25, 2011
    ISBN9781436125765
    Hiroshima

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    Reviews for Hiroshima

    4.5/5

    491 ratings65 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Originally published in 1946 in the New Yorker as a long narrative non fiction piece, this edition has a final chapter added in which allows the reader to see what became of the people the book focusses on.The author spent time in Hiroshima talking to 6 survivors of the atomic bomb that put a stop not only to WWII, but to the lives of 100,000 Japanese (mostly) civilians. He wrote their stories in a narrative form which was relatively unheard of then, and it succeeds in pulling you into the lives of these unfortunates. We hear a lot of each person's experience of the actual explosion, and the days and weeks afterwards. And with the final long chapter, we get a picture of how they lived out their days to the point of the 40th anniversary of the bombing.The indiscriminate nature of injuries and death in the bombing is mirrored in the telling of the tales of these peoples' lives, they are a varied bunch and their lives play out accordingly. The cultural peculiarities of the Japanese interested me (what we Westerners would possibly term excessive thought for others, epic levels of survivor guilt, etc), as did the horrific nature of the injuries and the post-disaster suffering of so many. The book does a great job of conveying the magnitude of the event, and the long-term consequences.
    • 5/5
      This is a true story. It is written like a novel, in the viewpoint of 6 different survivors on August 6,1945 when Hiroshima was hit by the atomic bomb. It follows their lives and how they survived and lived in the following years.

      This book is not for the faint of heart. It describes some of the horrific effects of radiation poisoning.

      I read “Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up” by Lesley M M Blume first. This tells much of the background of how “Hiroshima”was written and behind the scenes information.

      I would recommend reading “Fallout” first, then “Hiroshima”.
    • 2/5
      Disclaims the responsibility of US government instead of that it blames to te object of the atomic bomb as if were a real persona
    • 5/5
      Herseys Hiroshima is top notch. A must read for this generation.
    • 5/5
      Wow I had no clue! So happy we read this!
    • 4/5
      This is not a pleasure read due to its tragic story and dense writing, but a necessary read. It tells the stories of six individuals who survived the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima by an American bomber during World War II. There are no political statements in this book. It consists only of individual stories from the first impact of the bomb on them and others in Hiroshima through the later years of these individuals. This story will leave a lasting impression on me and a sincere hope that there will never again be a need for such a devastating tragedy to happen.
    • 4/5
      Reason Read: TIOLI challenge, January 2023. This book is relevant today as we stand at the brink of another use of nuclear warfare and as quoted in this book. Memory of how this should never happen has faded from peoples memories or has never been a part of that memory. We should not forget. This is nonfiction, amazing work that tells about the aftermath of the bombs dropped by the US on the citizens of Japan.
    • 3/5
      Horrific account of aftermath of Hiroshima blast in 1945 Japan.
    • 4/5
      A classic first account published in 1946 - What an incredible story to read about five people's experience who actually survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I've had this little book in my library since 1999. I ended up with it after my mother-in-law passed away. Notice the author, John Hersey. Well, my daughter would marry a Jonathan "Jon" Hersey seven years later, and, of course, I gave the book to them for their library.
    • 4/5
      Isn't it strange that in times of intense tragedy (like your country being at war), that one could be lulled into a false sense of security just because of the Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome? When the village of Hiroshima was bombed many people didn't heed the warnings. Even those responsible for alerting others to oncoming attacks didn't see it coming. What are you supposed to do when the system you are taught to trust gives the "all clear" signal? How are you supposed to react? Hiroshima follows the lives of six Hiroshima bombing survivors from the moments before the blast on August 6th, 1945 at 8:15 a.m. to the aftermath of the following year: Miss Toshiko Sasaki, Dr. Masakazu Fujii, Mrs. Hatsyo Nakamura, Dr. Terufumi Sasaki (no relation to Miss Toshiko), Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, and Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto.Fair warning: you will be privy to excruciating details about their injuries and subsequent health issues. People with no outward visible wounds had a delayed response to radiation sickness with symptoms difficult to fathom. Your heart will break to read of their confusion when trying to understand what happened to them. Theories and rumors about the "strange weapon" abounded. For example, for a while people assumed powdered magnesium was dumped on power lines, creating explosions and subsequent fires. Survivors believed they were doused with gasoline.
    • 5/5
      A book that should be read. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the Second World War. This book is about the experience of six survivors of Hiroshima. It describes their lives from before the explosion until one year later. All were diminished in quality. The stories tell of unimaginable conditions forced upon people unprepared for them. And the author raises questions about the ethics of nuclear war. I pray that this never happens again.
    • 5/5
      Yesterday, August 7th, 2020, I re-read this short but detailed classic of six eyewitness experiences of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I was amazed at how garbled my memory of it was and that I hadn't even remembered the back and forth narratives of the six eye witnesses. My main memory was of the experiences of the Japanese Methodist pastor and the German Jesuit priest. I had even melded these two into one character as the years had passed. About halfway through the book it dawned on me. Just as I was now reading Hersey's classic the day after the 75th anniversary of the ushering in of the atomic ago, I had originally read the book because of the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. At age 49, that is more than half a lifetime ago! How important it is to re-read important books. The journalistic style makes the telling very powerful. The six characters lives, an office clerk, two doctors, two clergy, and a widow with young children, move back and forth in a readable, understandable and yet bewildering style. They are all confused, scared, horrified, curious and yet strangely calm. The level of destruction and human suffering is like nothing they have ever seen or even imagined. Perhaps, the most graphically powerful image is that of the German Kleinsorge offering a hand to help a burn victim only to have the skin slip off like a glove. The most spiritually haunting moment may be the first time the injured office clerk, Sasaki is able to see firsthand the center of Hiroshima towards the end of August. While she was clearly horrified it was the "blanket of fresh, vivid, lush, optimistic, green" and Sickle Senna at the center of the blast, as if with the bomb came also a shower of seeds, "that particularly gave her the creeps." Like a great journalist, Hersey presents the findings of Japanese doctors, researchers, scientists and statisticians. The stages of radiation sickness are explained. The methods for calculating actual death tolls compared to "official numbers" is covered. Japanese scientists uncovered the details of the size, power and temperature of the atomic bomb even though mention of the atomic bomb was theoretically banned from scientific publications in Japan during the Allied occupation. It's a shame this was not required reading while I was in high school. Even though I read it on my own as a young twenty something, I obviously put it down without the communal discussion that is so necessary for this topic. Hersey does not present an opinion about the morality of the bomb but he presents the process that some of his witnesses and the Japanese people went through to come to grips with the fact of the atomic bomb. Fatalism seemed to be the most common feeling. Hopefully, by writing this review I can finally contribute to the public discussion and encourage others to read this very important work. If you start reading it on a free weekend evening, you will be finished reading by the next morning. God willing you will not be able to stop thinking and feeling the reality of the atomic age before you go back to work on Monday.
    • 5/5
      On re-reading this classic, I was touched even more deeply than the first time I read it many years ago. Like "All Quiet on the Western Front," this book haunts the reader and , without a speck of moralizing or histrionics, points out the horror and absurdity of war.
      As I grow older and see more and more of humanity and of what the world has to offer, I struggle more and more to even conceive of any notion of how man can see war as an acceptable tool of his existence. What is so important that we should murder each other, brutalized families left grieving and plunder the landscape?
      The six characters of Hiroshima rise above the question of the morality using the atomic bomb and even above the question of the morality of warring in general, to show characters for whom the simple act of living is man's most noble achievement.
    • 5/5
      Just as anyone unconvinced of taking action to help those who lose everything should read the grapes of wrath, those who are hawkish or play loose and wild with nuclear weapons should read Hiroshima by John Hersey. Never a more devastating detailed account of the horrors of nuclear war and disregard for the aftermath of weapons of mass destruction. Once its unleashed it's over for our beloved planet and for mankind. Nuclear power has no preference for race or color wealth or power. We all suffer and die the same.
    • 4/5
      I read this all in one day. The total destruction from the atomic bomb is so hard to fathom. Entire buildings were obliterated by the force of the explosion. Structures that we would think of as safe were just gone.

      This book follows the lives of 6 people in Hiroshima at the time the bomb went off. We follow them from the moment of explosion and then for the first year. It is told in a matter of fact, clinical style that only accentuates the horrors that they endured. I would hope reading this would deter people from ever using this type of bomb again.
    • 5/5
      I read this book in high school, but have never forgotten it. If everyone read Hiroshima, would we cry out against nuclear proliferation? I would say yes. The description of scenes immediately after the fall of the bomb, and the scenes of its effects are stamped forever in my mind. This work of (ever so much) realism is an informative read, and leaves you wondering: what city will be next?
    • 5/5
      John Hersey's account of the lives of six survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was first published just a year after the events. Despite the passage of more than seventy years, the work endures, as moving now as it was when first published in 1946. The book was updated forty years later, so we now know what happened to all six people and their families. Probably the most shocking moment in the whole book was this one: In May 1955, one of the survivors, Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who was visiting the US, was given an unexpected starring role in the NBC television series "This Is Your Life". Tanimoto had no idea what was happening, and his shock is palpable when the studio brings out as a surprise guest Captain Robert Lewis, the copilot of the Enola Gay, which carried out the bombing. This incredibly insensitive movement comes at the end of a short book which cries out for sensitivity, for understanding, for empathy. Nuclear weapons must never be used again, ever.
    • 5/5
      Hiroshima by John Hersey was printed again by THE NEW YORKER, which is where it first appeared, for the August 6th anniversary of the bombing. I read it perhaps fifty years ago and found it as compelling when I read it again this week. Hersey takes us to Hiroshima at the moment of the bomb exploring to life on the ground in the several days thereafter. It is horrific, ultra realistic and frightening to say the least. Nonetheless it does nothing to weaken by resolve that Truman did the right thing to bring the Second World War to an end.
    • 5/5
      Hiroshima is John Hersey's timeless and compassionate account of the catastrophic even which heralded the coming of the atomic age. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author went to Japan, while the ashes of Hiroshima were still warm, to interview the survivors of the first atomic bombing. His trip resulted in this world-famous document.I don't know of any book that has been launched with quite the history of this brilliant piece of journalism. First, it made history by the New Yorker devoting its entire edition to the article. Next, it was syndicated by the Herald-Tribune. And then it appears (as of the above date) in book form. Hailed by press and public as ""the best reporting of this war"", in its clean, classic restraint, its simplicity, its severity by implication, this is an artistic achievement as well as a threat to this still unsettled world. Here is the story of six of the survivors at Hiroshima, where a hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb:- Miss Sasaki, a clerk; Dr. Fujii, a physician; Mrs. Nakamura, a tailor's widow; Father Kleinsorge, a German Jesuit; Dr. Sasaki, a young Red Cross doctor; the Reverend Tanimoto, a pastor.... six who ""still wonder why they lived when so many others died""... who now know that ""in the act of survival they lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought to see"". What they saw, what they felt, what-through satiety of terror and suffering- they did not feel, what they had and what they lost, is all told here. No one can remain unconcerned or unmoved. Hersey has risen to the heights of impartial recording that makes this a human document transcending propaganda.
    • 5/5
      Originally published in 1946 in the New Yorker as a long narrative non fiction piece, this edition has a final chapter added in which allows the reader to see what became of the people the book focusses on.The author spent time in Hiroshima talking to 6 survivors of the atomic bomb that put a stop not only to WWII, but to the lives of 100,000 Japanese (mostly) civilians. He wrote their stories in a narrative form which was relatively unheard of then, and it succeeds in pulling you into the lives of these unfortunates. We hear a lot of each person's experience of the actual explosion, and the days and weeks afterwards. And with the final long chapter, we get a picture of how they lived out their days to the point of the 40th anniversary of the bombing.The indiscriminate nature of injuries and death in the bombing is mirrored in the telling of the tales of these peoples' lives, they are a varied bunch and their lives play out accordingly. The cultural peculiarities of the Japanese interested me (what we Westerners would possibly term excessive thought for others, epic levels of survivor guilt, etc), as did the horrific nature of the injuries and the post-disaster suffering of so many. The book does a great job of conveying the magnitude of the event, and the long-term consequences.
    • 4/5
      Growing up, both in high school and college, I never learned much about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If they were mentioned at all, it was either in a way that expressed that 1) it was completely unavoidable and/or saved numerous lives, or 2) should have been accompanied by chants of USA USA, WE'RE #1, USA USA. The mentions that fall under the first category were brief, and the instructors were quick to move on to another topic of discussion; the mentions that fall under the second category were rather scary, but, fortunately, usually also brief.The book doesn't attempt to argue that the bombs weren't necessary, and so that isn't going to be part of my review, either. Instead, the book focuses on six people who were present in Hiroshima on the day that the atomic bomb was dropped, and for a variety of reasons, somehow survived to tell their stories. There's a German priest, two doctors, a Japanese Christian minister, a factory worker, and a widow who was at home with her children. Some suffered grave and lasting bodily injury; others were left remarkably unscathed, at least when it came to physical damage. Some lost their entire families; others had their whole families survive. The common thread amongst them, of course, is that they saw damage on a scale that is really unimaginable, even once you've seen the pictures of a devastated Hiroshima. To have everything, and nearly everyone, you know wiped away in a single instant; to be left in a wreckage that was once your home and not able to even trust if the water is safe to drink now; to see so much suffering and death. Many of them had absolutely no idea what had happened for quite some time - one woman believed that she had been the cause of it, that something had exploded because she hadn't been shifting the train she was on correctly. It's an eye-opening book, even now, many decades after the events. I can only imagine how much more eye-opening it was when it was first published. The book is a little dated, but that is easy to look past because, ultimately, people are people, even in different places and different times. There's also an update that took place forty years after the bomb was dropped, when the author followed up with all six people who were originally profiled in the book to see how their lives had, or had not, been affected. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      An account of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima through the lives of 6 of its victims.Interesting, although I found it a little difficult to keep some of the people straight. I'm not certain whether that's the fault of the writing or my doing other things while trying to listen to the audiobook...
    • 4/5
      A very interesting non-fiction, heart-rending story of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan in August of 1945. It follows six people who survived, and the story is told in such a way that the reader can follow what happened chronologically through time and see what the people there went through. So sad :'(
    • 5/5
      The impact of Hershey's reportage in the aftermath of Japan's 1945 surrender has only grown with each tri I take to Japan and each attempt by policy makers to revive the concept of a nuclear deterrent.
    • 5/5
      John Hersey's Hiroshima recounts the lives of six survivors of the atomic bombing on 6 August 1945. His matter-of-fact reporting is as powerful now as it was when it first appeared in The New Yorker in 1946. Hershey humanizes an event so easily condensed into statistics (100,000 dead) and forces his American audience to wrestle with the implications of the terrible power the U.S. unleashed at the end of World War II. This early account of the atomic age should be read and re-read until nuclear weapons no longer menace humanity.
    • 5/5
      I discovered The Saturday Review of Literature in the early seventies, after reading an article about Norman Cousins, the then editor. About a decade later, the magazine ceased publication. The second thing which struck me was a blurb on John Hersey’s Hiroshima: “Everyone able to read should read it.” The early seventies were the days of antiwar rallies, and calls to ban nuclear weapons. Of course I had heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all the justifications for using the atomic bomb in 1945 as a way to end World War II quickly and save many millions of military and civilian lives. John Hersey’s work really opened my eyes to the horrors of nuclear weapons.The original history was updated about four decades later to show the long term effects of the bomb. Hersey tells the story through the memoirs of six civilians who were in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 AM when the bomb exploded. The curious thing is the completely random steps these individuals had taken which took them out of the direct effects of the blast.Hersey wrote, “At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next guess. At that same moment, Dr. Masakazu Fuijii was settling down to read the Osaka Asahi on the porch of his private hospital, […]; Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, a tailor’s widow, 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; Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German priest of the Society of Jesus, reclined in his underwear on a cot on the top floor of his order’s three-story mission house, […]; Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, a young member of the surgical staff of the city’s large, modern Red Cross Hospital, walked along one of the hospital corridors with a blood specimen […]; and the Revernd Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Hiroshima Methodist Church, paused at the door of a rich man’s house in Koi, the city’s western suburb, and prepared to unload a handcart full of things he had evacuated from the town in fair of the massive B-29 [bomber] raid which everyone expected Hiroshima to suffer” (3-4). These six individuals lived to describe the aftermath of the explosion. At first, they all thought a bomb had hit close to their location, but when they emerged from the wreckage, the amount of destruction was beyond imagination. As time passed and those who had lived through the terror, did not want to refer to themselves as “survivors” in fear of causing some slight insult to the victims. Instead, they referred to themselves as “hibakusha” or literally, “explosion-affected persons” (92). The “hibakusha” struggled for years to hold together what remained off their families, friends, and their own lives. For example, it wasn’t until 1951 that Mrs. Nakamura was able to move into a new house. Dr. Sasaki spent the next five years removing ugly keloid scars from residents of the city. Of course, as long term effects of the explosion began to surface, the full extent of the horrors of nuclear war emerged.Yet today, we live on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Nations struggle to build nuclear weapons. Some call for using these weapons to further religious, political, or economic interests. As is the case in so many examples of war, some have forgotten the lessons of history. The Saturday Review was correct: “Everyone able to read [John Hersey’s book] should read it. 5 stars.--Jim, 12/6/16
    • 4/5
      Reread this classic; shows human effects of 1945 nuclear event. Seen through the eyes of several survivors, it leaves to the imagination many questions. First published in 1946, this edition includes a 1989 update. As a high school student, I remember "analyzing" this book--without a lifetime's experience, that made no sense. Now, it does.
    • 4/5
      A short, but information-packed, read about the effects of dropping an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The author closely examines six survivors of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and recounts their experiences in the days and years after the bomb was dropped. These varying stories - of an injured girl left lying outside for days afterwards, of a mother and children sick in the park after drinking river water - vividly illustrate the effects on ordinary people and display how little was known about the effects of nuclear radiation at the time. The author stops short of advocation for disarmament of nuclear weapons, but the theme emerges strongly in the final chapters, as the long-term effects of the atomic bomb are discussed.
    • 4/5
      A nonfiction chronicle of the lives of six survivors of the Hiroshima bombing. The horrific things experiences by the people who lived there are told in a powerful way. Originally written in 1946, Hersey's book now includes a final chapter that was added in 1989.
    • 5/5
      A journalist captures the accounts of six H-bomb survivors. Hersey produced this "most sifnificant piece of journalism of modern times" (1946) shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima. This descriptive, gut-wrenching, retelling of the events as experienced by six survivors will touch your soul. I can't imagine a more pertinent read in this day and age. It's a quick read if you can sail through your emotions with ease--I read it on a 2-hour train trip. Please read this, and release, and release. We each need to make a connection between war rhetoric and humanity. Hopefully this will jolt you into action...