Hershey's Atomic Japan

Hiroshima

John Hershey

Hiroshima tells the story of six Japanese and German victims of the atomic bombing of the 7-rivered city of Hiroshima under the Presidential administration of Harry S. Truman. It was published in article form in the New Yorker magazine on the 1-year anniversary date of the bombing. That issue contained hardly another word save for this article, without commercial ads.

The subscription circulation largely outside NYC - 300,000 - was astonished with it, as were newsstand readers. It was read in its entirety on the radio.

John Hershey had worked as a secretary for Sinclair Lewis, and likely was influenced by the topics and writing style he witnessed. Such provocative fiction as Elmer Gantry (1927, faith healing and fraud) and It can't Happen Here (1935, America under a fascist regime) were highly controversial. Hershey wrote Hiroshima in a straightforward, objective manner to which readers are still drawn, althogh critics have accused him as a Japnese sympathisizer. A longer version published four decades later followed up on the six victims followed in the first edition, in the same manner.

After VE-Day, named for the victory in Europe of the Allied Forces in WWII, President Truman called for the surrender of Japan to end the complete war timeline. Emperor Hirohito refused. A city of 245,000 residents in 1945, Hiroshima, stood next in line after the federal seat of Tokyo to become the center of war direction and communications, should Tokyo of Japan fall to American forces. President Truman opted for bombing Hiroshima on August 6, rather than the leading city, as a show of strength and an extreme and deadly warning. Several days later, he ordered Nagasaki bombed.

The Japanese were always on the lookout for B-san, the American B-29s through brought destruction. Children used to run out in to the streets to see them before they were pulled inside by adults to hide. "B-san, B-san!" they would shout (Mr. B, Mr. B!) as if they were at a fireworks display ready to ignite or watching the circus train come to town.

On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, B-san struck for the last time at Hiroshima.

The entire local unit of the Hiroshima-based Japanese military was in the center of the city during the blast, which came silently. They were on their way out of town on a mission when they were overtaken by a sheet of sun power, as some of them described it. A horse and his driver were vaporized, their shadow embossed on the nearby concrete, the driver's arm raised with a whip poised to strike. Soldiers were vaporized, or large portions of their skin blow off like a loose glove. Another military unit, near a park about a mile away from the city to the west were stranded - looking toward the skies for Mr. B, their eyes melted from the white flash. People within 2 miles of the center city and with their backs towards ground Zero saw a heavy yellow flash, but heard nothing. Some felt a change in air pressure, but there was silence and then bright light.

Dr. Fujii, a leading physician with his own small private hospital and attached home, was sitting on his back porch reading a newspaper when the flash occurred. He awoke to find that his building had slid into the river below. He eventually walked to a suburb and a friend's house and it too, slid into a river. He went to another friend to recover fully form his many injuries. After the war, he returned to Hiroshima, bought a small building for a clinic and befriended the occupying American forces, learning English and calling himself Dr. Mujii on his shingle.

Only citizens and visitors some 20 miles away from Ground Zero could hear the explosion.

Miss Sasaki, a young and competent clerical worker in a tin works factory sat down at her desk and turned to the young woman on her right and saw the reflection of a yellow flash as big as the sky on the walls and window. She woke encased under heavy book shelves and books, weighed down by a heavy beam. Her left lower leg was broken in several places and bleeding. Many hours later, soldiers dug her out, told her to finish digging herself and left. They returned, dragged her out from under the beam, and put her out into the rain, an aftermath of the explosion and climate changes resulting from it, under an iron roofing section set up as a lean-to. The placed two other victims with her, both missing body parts and swelling with smelly, red, infected skin (the result of radiation exposure). Three days were spent in this manner. She was roughly carted form hospital to hospital, her leg not yet set because her leg infected, swelling like a balloon up to the hip. She was finally transported to the red Cross Hospital, where a young Dr. Sasaki (no relation) was the sole surviving doctor, tending to 10,000 civilian victims crowding inside and outside a 600-bed facility.