Hiroshima is a non-fiction book written by John Hersey, a journalist who traveled to Hiroshima a year after the atomic bomb and found out just how greatly it affected the Japanese people in the city. We get to see through the perspective of six survivors; Ms. Sasaki, Dr. Fuji, Mrs. Nakamura, Father Kleinsorge, Dr. Sasaki, and Mr. Tanimoto. The book starts just seconds before the bomb drops, telling us what the six people were doing in that exact moment. Then, the rest of the book is the gruesome details of the aftermath of not only the explosion, but of the effects of radiation. The atomic bomb was the first of its kind so when the radiation sickness first occurred, the townspeople were baffled as to what was happening to not only the injured, but the ones who had no external injuries.

This book isn’t just showing us the bombing though, it also reveals a deep sense of nationalism in the japanese after the tragedy. There were many scenes where people who were trapped and knew they were going to die began to shout how proud they were to die for their country, one man also ran right back into the fiery aftermath of the explosion, saying he would rather die by his own will than the Americans. They seemed to be more pained by the announcement of Japan’s surrender in war than their melting skin. I think this book is especially important for the youth of America to read because most of us have never really experienced the horrors of war and hopefully never will, but that doesn’t mean we should stay ignorant about it. The book goes into detail about the horrible effect of a bomb that is now considered weak compared to the ones countries are armed with today. In one scene, Mr. Tanimoto approaches a young girl grasping to an infant child when he notices it was dead, she begs him to find her husband crying, “He loved our baby so much. I want him to see her once more.” This book is not fiction, it was a reality for more than 350,000 people living in Hiroshima at the time. I really recommend everyone read this book, it is a short read, just about 90 pages. The review on the front page really says it all, “Everyone Able to Read Should Read It. - Saturday Review of Literature.”