My Hiroshima

By Junko Morimoto

The book My Hiroshima is a wonderful book that tells younger children and adults about how wrong it is to use atomic bombs. The reader is given a child’s view of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The book helped me to understand how hard it is for adults and children to live during wartime.

When I read My Hiroshima, I was shocked by the fact that grownups would do something so horrible as use a deadly weapon on civilian people. Adults were not setting a good example for children to follow. At this point, it is our job to educate people and make sure that something as tragic as an atomic bombing will never happen again. Although I thought I had an appreciation for the suffering of the Hiroshima bomb victims, I found that this book had more to teach me. It was as though I was experiencing the horror of the atomic bomb firsthand, just reading the story. For example, the narrator described how her sister’s teeth stuck through her lip after the explosion, for she had been using chopsticks.

I think writing a book about being a child during World War II is an effective way to tell the story of the atomic bomb, and what it can do to a city. Not only does the reader learn about how a little girl sees the atomic bomb and lives through the disaster, but also, the reader learns how she feels about the horror now that she is older.

Overall, I think that this is a wonderful book and that everyone should read it to find out more about the bombing of Hiroshima.