Hiroshima

Hiroshima by John Hersey has become a required reading book for many high schools. I think part of that is due to its brevity, which makes it more likely that teenagers will read it. However, its subject matter - the stories of several survivors of the US bombing of Hiroshima is not light. Hersey depicts the moments before and after the bombing as well as following up on the later lives of each person depicted.

The book is not as poignant as The Diary of Anne Frank. It almost seems as though the author is waving a wild finger, pointing, saying, "look what you did!" The book really has many of the same qualities as an in-depth newspaper articles where the author remains objective. It relays the facts of what happened and the pain, but not really the horror of it. Maybe it was just me - Hersey's writings just didn't engage me emotionally. That, and I am irritated with his scolding tone in describing the lives of those survivors who didn't completely devote themselves to others and enjoyed as much of a regular life as they were able to. Of course those particular stories ended less happily than that of the woman who became a nun and the priest's story. It was if he went out of his way to say "that's not how you should grieve. See these people? They did it the right way." I found that annoying.

All that editorializing aside, I can see why the book is on many reading lists. It is one of the few books that describes the bombing of Hiroshima from the point of view of the Japanese civilians living there. Recommended, but if interested in this part of history, I'd also pick up another book that's illustrated - funny that we don't see too many pictures of the destruction wrought by the US here and so many illustrations, History Channel programs, etc... about the Nazi concentration camps. Sigh...