Hiroshima

This chapter covers most of a year, from August 18, 1945, to August 1946. Hersey continues to follow the lives of the six characters and the bomb’s effects on each of them. A different stage of illness took hold about a month after the bombing, generally manifesting as an unexplained fatigue, weakness, and malaise. Father Kleinsorge, Rev. Tanimoto, and Mrs. Nakamura and one of her children experienced this, taking to bed for long stretches at a time. Nakamura’s hair came out in clumps when she brushed it. In the early autumn, Tanimoto went to his father’s home in Shikoku to convalesce for a month, while Kleinsorge was sent to a Catholic hospital in Tokyo. The doctors at the Catholic hospital thought Kleinsorge was in danger of dying from a high fever and dangerously low white blood cell count.

Rumors continued to spread about what caused this. Some thought the Americans had dropped a poison with the bomb that would last for up to seven years. However, Japanese scientists had a better idea of what happened, as they were well aware of atomic energy’s potential to create radiation sickness. Teams of physicists from around the country visited Hiroshima to conduct studies and determine where ground zero had been. They concluded that the radiation levels were now safe for habitation.

Dr. Sasaki and his colleagues at the Red Cross Hospital studied radiation sickness in their patients. They identified three general stages. First was the body’s direct absorption of radioactive particles, which in many instances was harmful enough to cause death: “It killed ninety-five per cent of the people within a half mile of the center, and many thousands who were farther away” (76). The second stage followed a couple of weeks later, characterized by hair loss, diarrhea, and later by fever and blood disorders like a low white blood cell count. The third stage saw the body overcompensating as it fought to overcome radiation’s effects. For example, white blood cell count often shot up past the normal range in patients, and cuts and burns healed too much, creating a bumpy scar tissue of keloid tumors. The effects were unpredictable and variable. Dr. Fujii, for instance, had no ill effects; he bought an empty medical clinic in a suburb of Hiroshima and practiced medicine again.

Meanwhile, Toshiko Sasaki, who had been moved from hospital to hospital, now found herself at the Red Cross Hospital throughout October and November. Dr. Sasaki treated her. He could do little for her leg, as it was still too swollen and full of pus. For the time, all he could do was create incisions to drain the fluid.

Father Kleinsorge was released from the hospital in Tokyo in December and slowly improved. He helped to rebuild the grounds of the Jesuit mission and, early in 1946, visited Toshiko Sasaki at a friend’s request. The friend noticed her depressed state from her lingering medical issues and thought Kleinsorge might cheer her and give her hope. When they met, Sasaki expressed skepticism at Kleinsorge’s Christian god: “If your God is so good and kind, how can he let people suffer like this?” she asked (83). She came to enjoy their meetings and by summer had decided to convert to Catholicism. Then Kleinsorge’s condition worsened again. A year after the Americans dropped the bomb, he returned to the hospital in Tokyo.

In the spring, Mrs. Nakamura and her children were able to move to housing near where her old house had stood. The home was cheaply built, with only a dirt floor, but it was all she could afford; she had run through her savings and sold her few possessions. By summer, she considered fixing up her old sewing machine and working as a tailor.

The original account ends here, in August 1946. Hersey summarizes the lives of the six characters:

Miss Sasaki was a cripple; Mrs. Nakamura was destitute; Father Kleinsorge was back in the hospital; Dr. Sasaki was not capable of the work he once could do; Dr. Fujii had lost the thirty-room hospital it took him many years to acquire, and had no prospects of rebuilding it; Mr. Tanimoto’s church had been ruined and he no longer had his exceptional vitality (87).

Despite being “among the luckiest in Hiroshima” (87), their lives were forever changed.