Hiroshima

by John Hersey

The book Hiroshima by John Hersey is sad and awesome. It is about the lives of six people: Miss Toshinki Sasaki, Dr. Masakazu Fujii, Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura, Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, Dr. Terufumi Sasaki and Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, on August 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. It tells horrifying stories of the people of Hiroshima on that day. The author describes many terrifying incidents in such detail, that some of them almost made me cry. This book even made my Grandfather dream about Hiroshima. One part even says this "About twenty men, and they were all in exactly the same nightmarish state: their faces were wholly burned, their eye sockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks. (They must have had their faces upturned when the bomb went off; perhaps they were Anti aircraft personnel.) Their mouths were mere swollen, pus-covered wounds, which they could not bear to stretch enough to emit the spout of the teapot." Father Kleinsorge was describing that.

My feelings about this book are mixed. They are sad, happy for the people who survived, sorrowful, sorrowful for the people that felt all that pain. Take a second and think about it. All that blood shed and pain for one person, the Emperor Hirohito. To conclude this book was a book that is good enough to read 200 times. I recommend it to people older than nine years of age.