A review by emswiz
Hiroshima by John Hersey

5.0

I originally read “Hiroshima” in a college course and its stuck with me ever since. I felt compelled to reread it after watching “Oppenheimer” and in remembrance of the 78th anniversary of the United States using the atomic bomb against Japan. The stories of the hibakusha, or bomb-affected people, are ones of suffering and heroism in the face of unprecedented horror. But they are also a reminder of just how irrational and disorienting nuclear weapons are—a theme elaborated on in “Oppenheimer” when the uranium atom is split, defying the theoretical calculations. One hibakusha finds his paper-mache suitcase sitting upright in the doorway while the desk it had been sitting under moments before is splintered into thousands of pieces. Two children sleeping across the room from one another before the bomb goes off are suddenly touching. A woman who survived the blast unscathed dies hours later. Wounds that should take days to heal take years. The stories in “Hiroshima” make something as unfathomable as the violence unleashed by atomic weapons, a little more fathomable.