Hiroshima Paper

The book begins with the telling of what the main six characters were doing before, during, and shortly after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The book goes on to show how the people believed that it only affected the general area, and how they realized that it affected the entire city. Many people were injured and scorn. Some people were even trapped under buildings. It continues to show when the Japanese Emperor announced on the radio that Japan was going to surrender to the U. S.

In the few days, survivors, Japanese scientists, and government leaders discovered that the weapon was actually a new type of bomb. The government was very careful and indistinct in reporting details to the public. The fates of the main characters were described, and they all suffered from some form of radiation sickness. The Japanese were able to figure out from analyzing the people and the remains of the bomb what is was made of. The last chapters tell you about the atom bomb victims a year to forty years after the bomb. It also tells how the city rebuilt itself and recovered from being attacked by a nuclear weapon.

Even though the six main characters went through the same situation in a different way they all fought to overcome the damage left behind y the bombing. Through reading this booking two characters that stood out to me were Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge and Dr. Terufumi Sasaki. These two stood out because I felt they helped a lot of people even when they could not help themselves. I have much admiration for Dr. Sasaki because he when called stood up to the plate, and was able to go on with his life. Father Wilhelm is a thirty-eight year old German priest.

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Father Wilhelm was in his room reading and got scared when he saw the flash. He somehow ended up outside in vegetable garden pacing around. The only physical marks he had were cuts. He helped a man escaped, but the man ended up running back into the fire. He went to a park called Asano Park where he helped assisting in helping people. Father Wilhelm was able to help the people in the park until he was taken to a Catholic Novitiate outside of the city. He took two children with him by the name of Kataoka who he able to reunite with their mother.

In the book it says that Father Kleinsorge may have had the worst sickness of all the main characters. He was sent to a hospital in Tokyo for over three months. He suffered from symptoms such as: high fever, low white blood cell count, and anemia. When he was finally allowed to return to Hiroshima the doctor told him that every day he should take at least a two hour nap. Even though the doctors told him to do this he did not follow instructions. He seemed to always put his work before his own health. When August came he was so sick he had to return to the hospital for a month's recovery process.

Since his exposure to radiation and constant working habits on behalf of others he ended up repeating the cycle of getting better and ending back up in the hospital. He did not slow down until his body gave out on him. He wanted o bad to help the people that he got Japanese citizenship and changed his name to Father Makoto Takakura. After some really bad sicknesses in the 1950s, he was finally transferred to a small church in Mukaihara, the same town as Dr. Sasaki. He ended up getting a cook by the name of Yoshiki-san, who in the end is there to take of him in came to thank him for the wonderful things he had done.

In 1976 he slipped on some ice and became bed-ridden for the rest of his life. Yoshiki-san was there by his side to take of him, and a year later he fell into a coma and never woke up. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki was a surgeon working at the Hiroshima Red Cross center. At the time of the bombing he was bringing blood to the laboratory. Dr. Sasaki was thankfully left undamaged because when the bomb hit he was lucky enough to have taken a step beyond the window and crouched down. He ended up being one of the six doctors left that was not hurt so he had to treat a lot of people.

At one point in time he had to work three days only having one hour of sleep. From working so much and not getting but six hours of sleep he ended up losing twenty pounds. The medical equipment he had to work with was not the best, and he was only working off of onations that people were making. He gained some since of his old self and ended up getting married to Dr. FuJii. They to live in a summer house, but a flood destroyed the house and he was forced to leave. He then opened a clinic in the suburb of Hiroshima, and rebuilt a successful practice.

He had to travel to Yokohama for training, and here is where he finally came to a realization Atomic bomb survivor. He soon found that he had to get his whole left lung removed, which almost resulted in his death. This occurrence made him appreciate life and he vow to treat his patients ore compassionately, and to spend more time with his wife and four children. Dr. Sasaki's only regret was that he had not been able to more carefully record the identities of all the Red Cross Hospital corpses so that they would not be wandering in the afterlife, upset at not being properly remembered. Dr.

Sasaki was the person who distanced himself from his Hiroshima experience through making a life somewhere else, while Father Wilhelm could not separate his self from Hiroshima resulting in his death. All six characters in this book were lucky because after the bombing unlike many people they still had their lives. Some were able to go on with their lives, while others let the situation take over them. The sickness was something that they all suffered from and was a negative that they all faced. Some of them dedicated and were obligated into helping the other people who were not as fortunate as them.

It had to be hard seeing people around you dying and there not being too much you can do. Father Kleinsorge passage was basically saying that was it right that people had no say so in their lives being taken. Kind of like saying should the people suffer for the decisions made by one person, when they do not even know what is going on around them. The people who consider it Just an attack that affected the civilian do not look at the broader aspect. The bomb was the ending result of something much bigger.

The people Just so happen to be a sacrifice in the situation. It was like the leaders of Japan were so caught up in evil that they did not realize that they were hurting the people of Japan. The bombing was like a realization to the government that they had been killing the people so much spiritually, and this was the physical outcome. It to me was kind of like they could not appreciate the good that they received after the bombing until they went through the bad. The good was that the initial war ended, but so many lives were lost in the process.

These lives being loosed I think had to happen because if it were smaller the people would have wanted to retaliate instead of come together and stop the violence. Reading this but the movie seemed to focus more on the American side of the bombing rather than side from the people in Hiroshima. The movie makes it seem as if the bomb had to be dropped, while reading the book you see that Japan could have been overtaken without the drastic measures. The book does not go into detail about the attack Japan has before, which was the cause of the bombing.

The movie and the book both focus on making one side seem more Justifiable or victims than the other. I think John Hersey book Hiroshima is a great book for college students to read because it gives them an outlook on the other side of the spectrum. This will allow them to decide for themselves who was wrong and right in the situation. It also even Just gives them a more detailed event of what actually happen August 1945. The book also gives students an outlook of how something major can happen to so many people and affect everyone in different ways. So the book should be read because either way it will be some type of learning experience.

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