Hiroshima John Hersey

Notes

Chapter 1: A Noiseless Flash
- Example of facts and figures, objectivity and pure journalistic style At exactly fifteen minutes past
eight in the morning on August 6, 1945 (p3)
- Introduction of characters picks out specific individuals (opposite of the heart mentality) engages
reader on a human level, and recognizes them as other humans. He then shows these people doing
ordinary everyday activates (no reference to physicality no stereotypical views). He simply shows
regular human beings with similar lives to the readers setting them up as just like us (p3). Therefore
Hersheys work emphasises the sameness and not the difference.
- Foreigner (German) represents the acceptance and way in which he belongs to the community. (p4)
- Juxtaposition between the everyone expected a b-29 raid and 100 thousand people were killed by
the atomic bomb (p4)
- Role of chance Each of them counts many small items of chance or volitation questions about fate
and destiny, and live and death and their role in a human life.
- Suggested innocence At the time, none of them knew anything. (put against Trumans speech
shows the difference)
- Hershey develops individuality and relationships. Children, families, babies.
- Mr. Tanimoto, like all his neighbours and friends, was almost sick with anxiety. age of anxiety.
- Gives the overall image of a complex human (p5 p2)
- Mr Tanimoto portrayed as human, Herseys work stands out through a sense of graphic realism and
characterization causes the humanising of characters Mr Tanimoto cooked his own breakfast. He felt
awfully tired (p6)
- Sense of facts and figures bottom of page 7 description of city + population
- Idea of eye witness accounts Almost no one in Hiroshimia recalls hearing any noise of the bomb. But
a fisherman in his sampan on the Inland Sea ner Tsuzu saw the flash and heard a tremendous
explosion; he was nearly twenty miles from Hiroshima. (p8)
- Sense perception adds to graphic realism
- Mrs. Nakamura compassionate, children to support, grief from war. (p12)
- everything flashed whiter than white (p12)
- The reflex of a mother set her in motion toward her children. (p12)
- Paradox/Contrast Dr/ Fujii hardly had time to think that he was dying before he realized he was
alive,
- Deliberate choice of characters towards religion, western references and medical staff to appeal to
the western reader.
- Religious figures dont sit and pray, they practically assist and work, helping survivors. Where was
God? (Loss of faith in institutions) (own individual search for meaning)
- Emphasis on sense of duty (Honour, obligation, ideas of enduring) (survivors guilt) Dr. Terufumi
Sasaki, the Red Cross Hospital surgeon. (p18, p2)
- There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books
(p23)