Hiroshima

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Summary: Hiroshima should be read but in historical perspective
Review: John Hersey's novel is a steadfast, poignant reminder of the impact of war on civilians. By focusing on a few individuals, Hersey brings home the lingering emotional and physical impact of first atomic bombing better than any subsequent writer on the subject. To this degree his work is an important literary contribution but hardly in the broader historical context. True, Hersey does not attempt to address the ethical issues surrounding Truman's decision to use the bomb and if the author's sole purpose was to intimately engage us with the personal dimensions of the aftermath, he should be lauded. Unfortunately, his work has been usurped by willfully ignorant liberals who are only too eager to assign this book to their dubiously historical archives. As another reviewer noted, no one seems to recall that in a two day period in mid-March, 1945 more civilians were killed in an incendiary raid on Tokyo-Yokohama than in the combined atomic bombings. The point here is not to quibble over casualty rates (human life is hardly a quibbling matter!) but to soberly pose the same question to ourselves that Truman and his advisers faced, namely, what made the bombings necessary? The most succinct response I have read to this question appears in the scholarly book "Truman and the Hiroshima Cult." I highly recommend it to the genuinely interested and the liberally befuddled. Consider what another reviewer has said: the Japanese were not the victims in this war and Japanese civilians were culpable. As a conservative estimate, the Japanese would have inflicted over 100,000 casualties on American forces in the first month of the Kyushu invasion. Let's stop conveniently villifying Truman and our other government leaders for once and ponder what we would have done if faced with the same enormous decision. Perhaps then we will see Hersey's book in a different, less strident, light.

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Summary: One sided
Review: I recently read this book for my 10th grade English class and was devastated as an American the amount which this book shows the American government and people as the bad guys in a war they started. The book failed to point out that American and Japan were at war with each other. In an act of, yes, great human loss at the time, in turn ended the worst war in human history. I believe that the book does do a good job of illustrating the horrors of nuclear warfare, but that is it. It fails to state reasons why we had to do it. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is one of the defining points in history, and most controversial. If people who actually try to understand the reasons why it was necessary to end the war. I am pround as an American that we had a leader (Harry S. Truman) who had the guts to drop the bomb and end the worst war EVER. Just for any one who cares our fire bombing raids with the B-29 bombers killed many more people than the atomic bombs did, yet no one has made arrguments about why we shouldn't of fire bombed all those cities. Think about it.

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Summary: Bombing of "the innocents"?
Review: If this book were offered in conjunction with treatises on the attack on Pearl Harbor, the brutality of the "Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere," and the rape of Nanking (recall the picture of the burned, wailing infant sitting in front of rows of burning buildings?), then it would be a valuable literary addition to our understanding of World War II. Sadly, it isn't. What you have is the worst, laziest kind of journalism--journalism by anecdote, the kind of cognitively defective writing that appeals to cognitively defective liberal high school teachers.

This book rips Hiroshima from its context, and moreover paints an extremely biased picture of exactly who the Japanese civilians were, and what they thought about the War. Not a peep from Hersey about how the Japanese civilian citizenry was solidly behind the militarism of 1930s Japan, about their celebrations over the brutal, absolutely brutal, destruction and occupation of the Korean pennisula or Manchuria. Also no mention of the fact that the Japanese population was willing to fight to the last person if and when the Allies were to land on Honshu. Saipan and Okinawa were almost *nothing* compared to what awaited the Allies.

No, Hersey didn't see fit to include the context of the bombing of Hiroshima; only the suffering...Ignorant Americans who lack even a rudimentary understanding of the Second World War will continue to lap up this journalistic detritus, blissfully unaware of brutality, militarism, and xenophobia brought about by Japan 1910-1945.

But the book is not all anti-American propaganda. The best this book has to offer is an accurate portrayal of what a nuclear bomb actually does. Those wanna-be warmongers who casually talk about dropping nuclear bombs should first read this book.

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Summary: Great Book!
Review: I read it when i was 14 and it captivated me. One of the best reads I've ever experienced!

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Summary: excellent
Review: This book was one of the best, if not the best book i have ever read. It brought more to a bomb being dropped it told a story of what happened before, during, and after. It really hits you hard.

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Summary: This book should be read by ALL Americans
Review: I read this book a few years ago in college, and it devastated me. As an American, I could not rationalize what my country did to these innocent people. This book should be read by all Americans, particularly those in history classes. It will make us think twice before we bomb cities.

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Summary: MUST READ!!
Review: I read this book in grade school, and its impact is still felt greatly. It is easy for the reader to recoil in horror by the total devastation of Hiroshima. It also questions one to ask why we need an atomic bomb, or atomic warfare, when things could be settled diplomatically if given a chance. The dropping of the A-bomb is a turning point in all of world history, and this great account masterfully produced by John Hersey will be an excellent source, and a world classic, for all future time.

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Summary: Powerful book, definitely worth reading
Review: _Hiroshima_ brings a reader close to the victims. It portrays the events in a very human manner, thus causing more impact on the reader. It never talks about whether or not the atomic bomb was ethical; however, it shows what happens after the war to a handful of Hiroshima's citizens. The book was written in a simple, straight-forward manner, which makes it easier to understand.

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Summary: Read This Book!
Review: This book is NOT fiction - unfortunately the events and the people in this book are very real. "Hiroshima" follows the lives of six survivors of the atomic bomb from the hours preceeding the explosion on August 6, 1945, to the decades afterwards. The survivors detailed in this book include a housewife, a German priest, two doctors, a young working woman, and a reverend. The details were superb, and I learned a lot of facts of which I was previously unaware. The story tells of the physical intensity of the bomb, the horrible, crippling symptoms experienced by the victims both at the time of the bomb and afterwards, and of the treatment experienced by the victims of the bomb. One of the things that most shocked me was the treatment of the "hibakusha" by their own country based on the Japanese government's reluctance to take responsibility for these victims. Everyone should read this book and educate themselves about this historical event (especially those of us who were not alive during that time period). It is sobering and frightening to think that it could certainly happen again anywhere in the world due to increased nuclear capabilites by many countries on this planet.

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Summary: The problem with this book
Review: ...is that teachers usually give it as an assigned read to their students without balancing it with other realities of WWII. Hiroshima is an accurate account of the after effects of atomic weaponry - however, it must not be forgotten that Japan was the agressor in the Pacific war. When teachers assign this book to their students, they should also give them an assigned reading that puts into perspective this event in the context of that era. I suggest that students be able to read something on the Nanjing Massacre, The Thai-Burma Death Railway, the Bataan Death March, the plight of "comfort women", the colonization of Korea by Japan, the forced starvation of Vietnam, or any other event connected to Japanese aggression. Too often, the facts get lost in the effort to portray Japan as "victim" of the war. One really interesting topic to research might be Japan's race to build an atomic bomb, as illustrated by the book "Japan's Secret War: Japan's Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb". Japan was a highly feared and brutal empire - after the bombing they all suddenly became experts on peace. Does this make any sense at all?

I lived in Japan for nearly a decade and was astounded at how little the average Japanese knew about Japan's wartime atrocities. This is due, no doubt, in part to the fact that the war is little mentioned in Japanese school textbooks. Moreover, the Hiroshima "Peace" Museum has absolutely no information on Japan's aggressive actions during the war. While I feel for the victims of the bomb, I also feel for the victims of the Japanese Army. It saddens me that the average Japanese has forgotten the victims of Japan's war campaign and instead chooses to wallow in self-pity over losing the war.