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Hiroshima John Hersey

PHOTOGRAPH BY SHUNKICHI KIKUCHI/MAGNUM

A view of Hiroshima, in 1945, from a hill which rises in the eastern part of the city.

Name: ___________________ Period: _____

English 10 Honors

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JOHN HERSEY, THE WRITER WHO LET

“HIROSHIMA” SPEAK FOR ITSELF By Russell Shorto published in The New Yorker on August 31, 2016

PHOTOGRAPH BY DMITRI KESSEL / THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION / GETTY

John Hersey was thirty-two when The New Yorker published “Hiroshima,” his massively influential article on the atomic bombing.

Seventy years ago (1946), this magazine devoted its entire August 31st issue

to an article by John Hersey titled “Hiroshima.” It became a landmark in

journalism, in publishing, and in humanity’s awareness of itself and its own

awful potential. It detailed the lives of six people who had survived the

American atomic attack on the Japanese city, which had taken place a year

earlier. Much reporting had been done in the aftermath of the bombing, most

of which was technical or philosophical, focusing on the power of the weapon

or on the wisdom of using it. In choosing instead to report on individual

victims, to follow the unfolding of their lives in minute detail from the

moment the bomb fell and as they struggled to exist through the ensuing

weeks, Hersey did something altogether different. He bore witness.

The issue of the magazine sold out at newsstands. The thirty-one-thousand-

word article was read over the radio; parts of it were excerpted in

newspapers; three million copies of it were sold in book form. It has been

in print ever since.

1. What differentiated Hersey’s article from others that were being written in 1946?

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Yet while Hersey, who was thirty-two at the time of publication, and who had

covered the war extensively for Time and Life, received accolades, and some

criticism, in the aftermath of “Hiroshima,” he remained somehow outside the

glare of the attention it generated. Likewise, for all the humanity of the

article, its author, who died in 1993, seems scarcely present in it; it

seems almost not to have an author. And the man who wrote what has been

called the most important work of journalism of the twentieth century, as

well as a shelf of best-selling novels and works of nonfiction, seems

largely forgotten today.

As it happens, one of John Hersey’s sons, Baird, is my brother-in-law.

Through the years, at holiday gatherings, we have chatted about his father.

With this anniversary in mind, we had a more purposeful conversation. I

asked Baird, who is a musician and composer living in upstate New York,

about the man his father was, about his approach to writing “Hiroshima,” and

about the enigma of his authorial persona.

“My father had a very strong moral compass,” Baird said. “I think it was

because his parents were missionaries. He lived in China, where they were

doing Y.M.C.A. mission work, until he was eleven. Even though he wasn’t a

religious person—he eventually reacted against being raised in that world—he

had a strong sense of right and wrong, and humility, and that colored his

approach to ‘Hiroshima.’”

Hersey was on a Navy ship on his way to Japan to report the story when he

fell ill and someone gave him books to read, one of which happened to be

Thornton Wilder’s “The Bridge of San Luis Rey.” It was a novel that traced

the stories of five people who are killed when a bridge collapses. “It

struck my father that that would be a good vehicle for presenting the story

of the people who were subjected to the atomic bomb,” Baird said. “He told

me about getting the idea of using novelistic devices to structure his

reporting. He wanted to put faces and names to the story. Prior to that, we

had been at war with Japan, and everyone had this opinion of ‘the Japanese.’

He wanted to show their humanity in a way that people in this country could

connect to—to convey the enormity of what had happened.”

The structure of “Hiroshima” was one of the things that resonated with

readers. Its use of fictional devices, such as building to a suspenseful

moment with one character and then switching to another, was radical at the

time, and made it a precursor to the New Journalism of the nineteen-sixties

and seventies. Hersey himself said that the profundity of the nuclear

attack, and his consequent need to try to convey the reality of it to

readers, forced him outside of journalistic conventions. With journalism,

Hersey once said, the reader is always conscious of “the person who’s

writing it and explaining to you what’s taken place.” He said he wanted to

have “the reader directly confronted by the characters,” so he tried to

write the piece in such a way that, as he put it, “my mediation would,

ideally, disappear.”

The disappearing writer was not just a feature of the work itself but, in a

sense, of Hersey’s career. “He was quite young when he had his success, but

it didn’t go to his head,” Baird told me. “I think he found the acclaim and

attention to be hollow.” As a result, the author of the biggest publishing

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sensation of its time was a virtual stranger to the world of publicity. “He

never went on tour. He never wanted to ‘flog his wares,’ as he said. He

didn’t go on TV or radio, didn’t give lectures. He only did two interviews

in his life. He was a member of the generation that developed the cult of

the author—people like Norman Mailer were doing ‘The Dick Cavett Show’—but

he didn’t want any part of that.”

2. Consider Hersey’s audience and purpose. Explain.

3. How did Hersey structure his article to accomplish his purpose?

Baird’s memories of his father are of a private man, but not a recluse.

Hersey had a small circle of close friends, which included Lillian Hellman,

William Styron, Ralph Ellison, Jules Feiffer, and Anthony Lewis. He belonged

to civic organizations, spoke out against the Vietnam War, and taught

writing at Yale. But he was guarded about his work. “He had this theory that

you should never talk about a book you were working on,” Baird said. “He

felt that writers would lose the energy of their stories by talking about

them. So we didn’t even know what he was writing. Then there would be a

dinner after he had sent the manuscript to the publisher, and he would share

with the family what the book was about.”

Baird was born after the publication of “Hiroshima.” His memories are of his

father at work on later books. They lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, and

Hersey wrote in a small cottage some distance from the house. “I used to

climb a tree, knock on the window, and ask if he could come out. He was very

regular in his habits. Every morning he would write, in longhand, double-

spaced, so that he could make corrections. In the afternoons he would answer

correspondence. He got lots of mail, and there was only one kind of letter

he would not answer. If the name was spelled ‘Hershey,’ it went in the trash

can.”

Baird doesn’t remember his father making a big deal about any of his work,

or his fame. “He was very reserved, which I think he regretted, because he

had a loving and warm side,” he said. “If my parents were having a dinner

party and I couldn’t sleep, he’d come up and rub my back.”

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In a perfect world, fathers exert a firm and wise influence on their

children. Perhaps that rarely happens. But Baird told me that his father’s

philosophy on work and the world coalesced for him in one conversation they

had. Baird was himself about the age his father had been when “Hiroshima”

was published. “We were on Martha’s Vineyard, where he always spent his

summers. I had built up a body of work as a musician. I had just had a

record come out that had gotten some attention but didn’t break out. I was

in that phase of my career, trying to figure it out. I guess I had something

in me that pulled me toward wanting fame. I wanted to know how he had

managed things early in his career. And what he said, essentially, was you

can’t look to the outside world to make you whole. That affected me

profoundly.”

Hersey’s refusal to flog his wares continues in effect. His daughter, Brook

Hersey, a clinical psychologist living in Manhattan, who is his literary

executor, told me that when it comes to ancillary projects that people bring

to her—movie deals, prospective biographies—“I have tried to make decisions

based on what I think he would have wanted, and that was to let his works

speak for themselves.” As a result, she said, “I’ve always erred on the side

of saying no.”

The slow fade in popular awareness of Hersey is surely in part a result of

that, as well as of the simple passage of time. But Hersey’s sensibility, so

at odds with today’s, suited its era. The authorial anonymity—the humility—

in “Hiroshima” made it the most respectful way to present the people Hersey

encountered in a post-nuclear city, and the clearest way to show Americans

what they had done.

4. Use details from the text to characterize Hersey.

KWL Chart Subject: Hiroshima

What do you KNOW WHAT do you want to know? What did you LEARN?

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Year Written:

Author:

Genre:

Chapters 1 & 2 (pgs. 1-41) Due Date: Monday, November 27th Directions: Answer the following questions as you read Chapters 1 & 2. When necessary, give evidence from the text and cite page numbers. Define the following words as you read chapter 1:

1. Convivial

2. Hedonistic

3. Notorious

4. Philanthropy

5. Terminus

Define the following words as you read chapter 2:

1. Awry

2. Conflagration

3. Dilapidation

4. Laceration

5. Vortex

1. Use outside sources to explain the context in which the book was written.

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2. Explain John Hersey’s writing style and how he structures the text. (See Your Rhetorical Keystone.) 3. Use specific details to describe the situation in Hiroshima before the atomic bomb? 4. The following are the names of the six survivors Hersey focuses on in the text. For each survivor, record details that stand

out to you as you read each chapter.

Survivor Before the Bomb Chapter 1 “A Noiseless Flash” Chapter 2 “The Fire”

Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto

Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura

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Which survivor(s) interests you the most? Why?

Dr. Masakazu Fujii

Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge

Dr. Terufumi Sasaki

Miss Toshinki Sasaki

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5. Compare and Contrast: How is the aftermath of the atomic explosion similar to the aftermath of a natural disaster? How are they dissimilar?

6. Based on what you’ve read thus far, what can you infer is Hersey’s view of the decision to drop the atomic bomb on

Hiroshima? Why?

Chapters 3 & 4 (pgs. 42-90) Due Date: Monday, December 11th Directions: Answer the following questions as you read Chapters 3 & 4. When necessary, give evidence from the text and cite page numbers. Define the following words as you read chapter 3:

1. Benumbed

2. Moribund

3. Putrid

4. Succinct

5. Suppurate

Define the following words as you read chapter 4:

1. Cache

2. Capricious

3. Emanation

4. Malaise

5. Succumb

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1. Complete the chart below with descriptions of the survivors and changes that have occurred in their lives. Record details.

Survivor Chapter 3 “Details are Being Investigated”

Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto

Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura

Dr. Masakazu Fujii

Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge

Dr. Terufumi Sasaki

Miss Toshinki Sasaki

2. Why is the title for Chapter 3 appropriate? Explain.

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3. How does Mr. Tanimoto describe the Japanese Emperor’s surrender and notice to the Japanese people? 4. How does Dr. Sasaki deal with the fatalities at the Red Cross Hospital? Is that a typically Japanese way of handling

death? Explain. 5. Hersey creates vivid images for the reader in Chapter 3. Choose two images that had the greatest impact on you and

explain why. In addition, complete a rhetorical analysis of the image.

Image (pg. #)

Explanation Rhetorical Analysis

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6. For each survivor, record details that are relevant as you read Chapter 4.

Survivor Chapter 4: Panic Grass and Feverfew

Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto

Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura

Dr. Masakazu Fujii

Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge

Dr. Terufumi Sasaki

Miss Toshinki Sasaki

7. What is the significance of the title of Chapter Four?

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8. When Father Kleinsorge returns to Hiroshima in August, what does he find? 9. What were some of the symptoms of the mysterious, capricious disease which was called radiation disease? Identify at

least two. 10. What are the three stages of radiation sickness?

Stage 1:

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Stage 2:

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Stage 3:

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