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The first volume in a two-book series about each of the atomic bomb drops that ended the Pacific War based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors to tell a story of devastation and resilience
In this vividly rendered historical narrative, M. G. Sheftall layers the stories of hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors—in harrowing detail, to give a minute-by-minute report of August 6, 1945, in the leadup and aftermath of the world-changing bombing mission of Paul Tibbets, Enola Gay, and Little Boy. These survivors and witnesses, who now have an average age over ninety years old, are quite literally the last people who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in their cities before the bombings, tell us what they experienced on the day those cities were obliterated, and give us some appreciation of what it has entailed to live with those memories and scars during the subsequent seventy-plus years.
Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing survivors who lived well into the twenty-first century, allowing him to construct portraits of what Hiroshima was like before the bomb, and how catastrophically its citizens’ lives changed in the seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, and years afterward. He stands out among historians due to his fluency in spoken and written Japanese, and his longtime immersion in Japanese society that has allowed him, a white American, the unheard-of access to these atomic bomb survivors in the waning years of their lives. Their trust in him is evident in the personal and traumatic depths they open up for him as he records their stories.
Hiroshima should be required reading for the modern age. The personal accounts it contains will serve as cautionary tales about the horror and insanity of nuclear warfare, reminding them—it is hoped—that the world still lives with this danger at our doorstep.
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
September 10, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593472262
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593472262
- File size: 2887 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from August 1, 2024
The first in a planned two-book series offering a comprehensive, moving mix of history, science, and interviews with the last hibakusha ("atomic bomb survivor/victim"). "What were those tens of thousands of people doing when they died?" So asked Abe Spitzer, B-29 radio operator on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions. That question serves as the motivation and epigraph for this deeply researched work by Sheftall, a professor of modern Japanese cultural history at Shizuoka University. The author has lived in Japan since 1987, teaching in the university system and writing about the Japanese American experience during World War II, including a book about the kamikaze, Blossoms in the Wind. He bases this compassionate, wide-ranging work on interviews with hibakusha, witnesses to the first atomic conflagration on Aug. 6, 1945 (only a handful are still alive). Sheftall uses a moment-to-moment approach to situate a diverse cast of characters--including military officials, all-girl volunteer units, students, and families--on that summer day in Hiroshima, a samurai castle town that had become a rail depot and military port, somehow spared from Curtis LeMay's firebombing campaign over the prior six months. Although there had been sightings of Col. Paul Tibbets'Enola Gay and its accompanying weather planes that morning, Japanese officials did not sound the air sirens. Sheftall also examines the development of atomic energy and its massively destructive power. "The bombs' hundred-meter detonation heights...guaranteed that every one of their victims suffered at least a second or so of (literally) searing agony," writes the author. These grisly details are often painful to read but necessary in order to understand how survivors sought aid, cremated the dead, and built a lasting peace memorial. Significantly, Sheftall writes about the overlooked Korean and Taiwanese survivors and the guilt trauma of survivors afterward. A major contribution to our understanding of and reckoning with a catastrophic event.COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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